TUDOR IDEALS 



BY 
LEWIS EINSTEIN 

AUTHOR OF " THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND," ETC. 



m 



NEW YORK 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 

1921 






COPYRIGHT, 192 1, BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 



AUG 26 1921 

0)C!.A622535 



TO H. E. 

SEVEREST AND MOST INDULGENT 

OF CRITICS 



J t:> 






PREFACE 

An early book by the writer on the Italian Renaissance 
in England had been intended as a partial introduction 
to a future history of English Sixteenth Century Ideals. 
But a diplomatic career spent mainly in distant parts, 
had interfered with its pursuit, and the shadow of a great 
war has been little conducive to the concentration re- 
quired for such a study. Like those architects who with 
vast plans in mind rear only a small wing of their edifice, 
the writer has been obliged to restrict his scope and his 
material till no one is more conscious than he of its frag- 
mentary and imperfect nature. 

In attempting to reduce into words the multiple activ- 
ities of a nation, it is no easy task to weigh their rel- 
ative importance or to feel convinced that one's individ- 
ual sense of perspective is either the correct or the only 
one. Historical perceptions are largely personal. One 
searches fixed points from which to measure distances. 
But such measurements at best are incomplete, and often 
other deductions might be drawn from the same range 
of facts. Especially, when the search is for ideals rather 
than for a chronological sequence, and the goal is the 
inner spirit of a nation at a rich moment of its evolu- 
tion, the method utilized, which aims to find the ex- 
pression of ideas in letters, and in acts, must be haphazard 
and the result elusive. 

It is easy to discolour history by over-blackening its 
shadows. It is as easy to bring out its drabness by re- 
ducing all to one dull plane. This study is only an incom- 
plete essay which se'eks to discover if under the vast 
maze of facts, can be found the rational beginnings of 
a structure of life in Sixteenth Century England. 



vi PREFACE 

If, as a fragmentary work it is now published, it is 
because of the hope that an interest in ideals, and not 
in events, in currents of opinion, and not in annals, may, 
perhaps, stimulate a closer inquiry into a period embrac- 
ing the formative elements in the life of all English- 
speaking nations. 

It has still another aim to justify the apology for its 
appearance. Dimly conscious as we are of the significance 
of currents which are now carrying us forward, it is im- 
possible not to realize that the great war has marked the 
end of an epoch, and that we stand to-day at the threshold 
of a new era toward which we are both groping and drift- 
ing. Still unshaped in its revelation, we can discern 
enough to feel the decay of an old world structure crum- 
bling on its foundations and dragging down in its ruins 
many of the adornments and amenities of life. We are 
entering into a new age still in its rough-hewn aspect, 
ushered in amid violence and disorder as was the period 
we are leaving behind. 

The Renaissance also, came only after the disintegration 
of medieval society had left feudalism, no longer possessed 
of inherent vitality and unable to prevent an anarchy 
out of which the new world was born. In this sense our 
era presents a curious resemblance to the age which 
forms the subject of this study. Its setting is different, 
its direction is opposite, but in many respects it is not 
unlike. We, too, are on the eve of great events. If we 
are wise in the measure of our force we will study our 
traditions the better to guide future hopes. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Preface v 

INTRODUCTION 

The Spirit of the Sixteenth Century. Importance of the Prince. 
Tendencies of the Age xi 

PART I. THE CROWN 

I. The Sanction of Power 3 

Transformation of royalty. Illegitimacy in succession. Title 
rests on power. Renaissance theory of the prince. 

II. The Theory of Majesty 11 

New power of the Crown. The prince above the law. Servility 
before the. king. Divine Right. 

III. The Royal Authority 20 

The Crown represents order. The evolution of the State. The 
prince's personality. Royal supremacy. 

^^ IV. The Prince and His Subjects 26 

Facility of approach. Ceremonial occasions and pageantry. The 
feeling of power. Elizabeth's love of popularity. 

— V. The Court 37 

Importance of the Court in the State. The scramble for riches. 
The art of pleasing. Miseries of court life. 

VI. The Training for Authority 47 

The Tudor education. The purpose of culture. Incongruous 
choice of officials. Preparation for State service. 

- VII. Office and Corruption 56 

Disorder in Government. The prince's favour. Explanation of 
corruption. Official honesty. 

VIII. Political Morality 63 

Crime in the 15th Century. Assassination and morals. Eliza- 
beth's hypocrisy. 

IX. The Idea of the State 76 

Slight importance of theory in England. Rational basis of state- 
craft. Edward the Sixth's ideas. Classical origin of political •-» 
philosophy. 

X. Public Opinion 84 

Apathy of opinion. Henry VIII's efforts to conciliate opinion. 
Early use of the press. Growing interest in pubHc questions. 
vii 



viii CONTENTS 

Page 

XI. The Spirit of Revolt 94 

Opposition to the Crown. Motives for rebellion. The Coup 
d'Etat. Apology for revolution. 

PART II. THE INDIVIDUAL 

I. The New Individualism 103 

Collapse of the medieval structure. The Tudor Monarchy and 
the individual. Excess of individualism. 

II. The Growth of Personality 109 

Circumstances and life. Liberation of the individual. 

III. The Vicissitudes of Fortune 115 

The adventurer. The rise and fall of men. The reaction to 
danger. 

IV. Violence in Private Life 121 

Survivals of lawlessness. Crime in the drama. 

V. The Evolution of Woman 124 

Contemporary opinion misleading. Upper classes respond to the 
new learning. The evolution of feminine ideals. 

VI. The Shuffling of Classes 131 

Disintegration of the old order. Class distinctions and hatred. 
The compromise of English life. 

VII. Traditional Survivals 140 

Political expediency of tradition. Gradual transformation of life. 
Deliberate reversions to the Middle Ages. 

VIII. The Social Fabric 150 

Influence of the Crown on the social structure. Reconstruction 
of society. The new conservatism. 

IX. The TiIeory of Aristocracy 157 

Divergence between theory and practice. Ethical considerations. 
Influence of antiquity. Ideal of nobiUty. 

X. The Preparation for Life 163 

Cultivated personality in the 15th Century. Physical training. 
Gilbert's Academy. 

XI. The Art of War 168 

Military structure of Medieval Society. Use of mercenaries. 
Standards of professional honor. Influence of war in English 
life. 

PART III. IDEALS OF LIFE AND THOUGHT 

I. Ideals in English Life 177 

The reflection of life on ideals. Growth of new ideals. 



CONTENTS ix 

Page 

II. Democratic Tendencies i8i 

The discovery of the lower classes. Religious foundation for 
democratic ideas. Puritans and Democracy. 

III. Patriotism as an Ideal 187 

The Medieval ideal of patriotism. Growth of nationalism in the 
Renaissance. English Catholics and divided allegiance. Exal- 
tation of the National Spirit. 

IV. Religion in the State 197 

Medieval .inheritance in religion. Spirit of martyrdom. Atti- 
tude of the Catholics. Political aspects of religion. 

V. Tolerance and Persecution 211 

Early tolerance. Popularity of persecution. Elizabeth's views 
on conformity. 

VI. Puritanism 220 

Puritan beginnings. Puritanism and Democracy. 

VII. Free Thought 225 

Doubt in the Middle Ages. Queen Elizabeth's French marriage 
and religion. Diffusion of free thought. 

VIII. Pacifism and War 230 

Relation of the age to ideals. Savagery of warfare. English 
desire for humanity. 

IX. • The Feeling of Compassion 234 

Benevolent institutions. Edward VI's charitable interests. 

X. Morality ' 240 

Church morals. Morality at court. 

XL The Family 244 

Love and the growth of personal freedom. Free choice in 
respect to marriage. 

PART IV. THE ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 

I. The Modern Spirit 255 

Consciousness of the age. Pride in achievement. Intellectual 
curiosity. 

II. The Idea of Fame 259 

Moderate interest in glory. Literary aspects of immortality. 
Monuments to the dead. 

III. Death 262 

Classical influence. Courage on the scaffold. 

IV. The Feeling for Nature .' 265 

Nature and the inner life. External observation. 

V. The Pleasures of the Country 267 

Enjoyment of the country. Social importance of the land. 



X CONTENTS 

Page 

VI. The Desire for Beauty 271 

Portraiture. Inability to appreciate Italian art. The English 
aesthetic sense. 

VII. Philosophical Ideas in Life 277 

Classical influences. Small originaHty of renaissance philosophy, 
superstition. 

VIII. England and the Sea 286 

The discovery of America due to the Renaissance. British 
backwardness in navigation. Consciousness of England's 
destiny as a seapower. Popular interest in maritime enter- 
prise. 

IX. Nationalism 299 

Hatred of foreign influence. Nationalism in Ireland. Scottish 
literary nationalism. The wells of English. 

X. Internationalism 310 

Scholarly aspects of internationalism. Imperialism. French 
influence in England. 

XI. Classicism and the Universities 316 

The Revelation of the Renaissance. Growth of English human- 
ism. Nationalism and the respect for antiquity. 

XII. The Diffusion of Education 325 

Extension of popular knowledge. The cultivation of the illiterate. 

XIII. The Discovery of Letters 332 

Renaissance expression in literature. Letters and public opinion. 
National quality of literature. 

XIV. The Cultivation of Life 336 

Cultivated public men. The well-rounded personality. 

Notes 341 

Index 359 



INTRODUCTION 

No age is ever stationary, and to label an era like the 
Sixteenth Century an epoch of transition, is to get no 
closer to the truth. It is more correct to say that the 
current of change flows swifter at certain periods than at 
others. Bacon wisely described time as the greatest of 
innovators yet failed to notice the varying nature of its 
rhythm. 

Broadly speaking, the Sixteenth Century and the Tudor 
Dynasty coincided with a period of rapid change. 
Both began amid the decay of ancient forces and both 
ended amid the advent of new elements around which 
were to be built the foundations of modern England. Dur- 
ing the interval something within men had changed. 
It is not easy to lay one's finger on what this was, 
for the spirit of an age hovers elusive like the fairies in 
"Midsummer Night's Dream." The beginning of the 
century had seen the country recovering from internal 
dissension, still imbued with the relics of a decaying me- 
dievalism, and much inferior to other states of Western 
Europe in resources and in civilization. At its end Eng- 
land ranked second to none, with an altered perspective 
gazing beyond the seas, and a fresh dignity and prestige. 
The seeds of British greatness had been sown between 
these times. 

What occurred to bring about this change? Was it 
due to the wisdom of sovereigns and statesmen, or to 
great currents like the Reformation, with its middle course 
steered between Rome and Geneva.? Is it to be found in 
the daring of English mariners ? Were there deeper causes, 
or did the accidents of personality and the trend of events 
weightier than men, act and react upon each other to 
bring about such results? 



xii INTRODUCTION 

Facts are warrens in which historians burrow not always 
successfully. Whoever is dissatisfied with the mere chron- 
icle of events must grope, often haphazardly, before he can 
probe into the spirit of an age. Inward processes which 
sway decisions or make great changes are ill accounted 
for, while evolution often works through silent and devious 
channels. Though outward circumstances and corre- 
sponding reactions are visible, there is always the unseen 
to reckon with. 

English evolution under the Tudors found its lawful 
expression through the prince, for events gravitated more 
than ever before or since, round his person. Directly or 
indirectly occurrences were few which lacked such sug- 
gestion. At no other time has the British nation swayed 
more readily in response to its rulers. /-Never again have 
conditions arisen where these could assert themselves so 
masterfully. 

Royalty underwent its own evolution in the Sixteenth 
Century. In the beginning, more than the symbol of 
the state, it was the state. The court drew to itself the 
best energies of the nation. It was the channel for its 
ability and the outlet for its taste. The country, so to 
speak, discovered itself through the prince. The indi- 
vidual who rose by his own merits and not by interpret- 
ing group consciousness, was obliged to conform to 
this general structure and had to shape his own ambi- 
tion by favouring that of his ruler. But the strength of 
the system was also its weakness. Where authority was 
individual the disappearance of the person weakened the 
state. Henry VIII could bequeath the crown to his son, 
he could not transmit to him the vigour of his own char- 
acter. 

In spite of the prince's enhanced power the enormous 
significance of the age lay in marking the birth of the 
individual as a personality and not merely as the tool of an 
organization, religious or civil. The real meaning of 
the Renaissance was in the new elements then brought 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

into life, externally and internally, by adoption and by 
evolution. Something fresh had altered existence. The 
discovery of the world offered a goal to adventurers of 
the body. The discovery of antiquity to adventurers of 
the mind. The unity of the state provided a conscious 
background of strength after the Civil Wars. Later the 
Protestant cause and the Spanish peril elated patriotism 
and the sense of nationality, making crown and people 
feel that together they had braved danger and together 
had accomplished great deeds. 

The Renaissance in England became apparent in no 
gradual orderly progression. Its first appearance was 
confined to court and university, hardly penetrating be- 
yond their fringe. Amid the struggles of the Reformation 
its growth remained inconspicuous and stunted. If strong 
rule preserved the land from civil war, the social upheaval 
with its double tale of fresh wealth and fresh misery, long 
kept down the finer assertions of the spirit. 

The English practical mind which understood facts 
rather than ideas, embraced neither Renaissance nor Ref- 
ormation, wholeheartedly. Neither attained the headway 
on British soil which the one had achieved in Italy, the 
other in Germany. Yet familiarity with both and the 
stimulus of new forces, brought out the nation's richer per- 
sonality. In the departure from conservatism and inertia, 
always the strongest element in tradition, a new national- 
ism, cosmopolitanism, and Puritanism, acted and reacted 
on each other. The cosmopolitanism which influenced 
the feeling of nationality, was that of universal culture, 
and the spark between the two produced the explosion of 
Elizabethan genius. 



FART I 
THE CROWN 



I. THE SANCTION OF POWER 

The Wars of the Roses left conditions in England plas- 
tic enough to receive the impress of any domination 
irrespective of its origin. Years of violence predispose 
men to accept accomplished facts by diminishing the 
prestige of legal claims which can no longer be enforced. 
Chaos favors the rise of strong personality. The horror 
of anarchy makes welcome the sole ability to preserve 
order; hence the royal power shaped itself to meet actual 
conditions. Kingship, to survive the storms it encoun- 
tered, became the most practical of institutions, resting 
its title primarily on the ability to seize and maintain 
authority. 

Afterward, years of serenity were to evolve other ideas 
which relied on an acquired prestige and sought sanc- 
tions still undreamed of. In the latter part of the 15th 
Century such glamour was almost unknown, and the road 
to royalty became the first step along which the individ- 
ual asserted his personality. He was able to do this 
because the rigid medieval structure had broken down 
and amid its ruins men instinctively were groping 
toward a new order. The lifeless feudal fabric was pre- 
pared to receive the impress of a fresher vitality. 

Before the Stuarts gave rigidity to the English 
state, a looser conception had prevailed with regard to 
the foundations of power. This allowed the proscribed 
grandson of a Welsh squire without legal sanction to seize 
the crown of England, and made it possible for his son 
to raise the royal prerogative to a pinnacle never since 
equalled. 

The first Tudor, so little of an adventurer in character, 
until he reached the .throne had been rendered one by 



4 TUDOR IDEALS 

circumstance. Richard Ill's proclamation against Henry- 
Tudor, signalled the humbleness of his early origin and 
the double illegitimacy of his claim. The nation was left 
undisturbed by the knowledge that his grandfather had 
been butler to a bishop, and all the royal blood in his veins 
flowed from illicit connections. In England, as in Italy, 
the long continued disorder made the test of royalty lie 
in the individual's ability to seize power. Never did 
monarchical ideas show less rigidity than at the close of 
the Middle Ages. 

At Bosworth Field Henry VII, as Bacon aptly puts 
it, was " in a kind of military election of recognition 
saluted King," discerning in this a Roman imperial re- 
minder unnoticed by the main actors. The dawn of a new 
era which was to elevate the crown to heights unknown, 
coincided with that of a dynasty whose founder assumed 
the regal power on the battlefield and who like Napoleon 
picked up the sceptre in the dust. Henry VII 's author- 
ity was won by the sword. When after his victory he en- 
tered London, he did so, again in Bacon's words, "as 
one that having been sometimes an enemy to the whole 
state and a proscribed person, chose rather to keep state 
and strike a reverence into the people than to fawn upon 
them." His first act was to offer his standards at St. 
Paul's, not meaning his subjects to forget that he came in 
by battle. He laid no stress on doubtful hereditary rights 
though bundling these along with other claims. His mar- 
riage to Elizabeth of York would have allowed him to 
assert more legal titles, but he preferred to avoid even 
the appearance of owing the crown to his wife. Only 
after confirmation by Parliament and his coronation, 
would he consent to marry the heiress of the Yorkist 
cause. 

The order he achieved made men soon forget the dis- 
order of his origin, for his enemies were ready to employ 
worse expedients. No greater travesty of royalty can be 
found than Edward IV's sister Duchess Margaret of Bur- 



THE SANCTION OF POWER 5 

gundy, recognizing as her nephew and rightful claim- 
ant to the English throne Perkin Warbeck, whom she 
must have known to be an imposter. Her hatred for one 
usurper, made her under guise of legitimacy, give 
sanction and support to another far greater. 

The nation had traversed too violent a crisis to care. 
Public opinion was still unformed, and the principles of 
order in the state insufficiently grounded for any claim to 
seem anomalous when accompanied by force. Judged by 
these principles no one had a sounder right to reign than 
the first Tudor who laid the foundations of modern Eng- 
land. He realized the precarious nature of his authority 
too vividly not to seek to make easier his heir's succes- 
sion. To confirm his dynasty, still resting on an insecure 
basis, Henry VII in accordance with the maxims of per- 
sonal rule, sought matrimonial alliance with Spain. Fer- 
dinand of Aragon, careless of Tudor origin, was mindful 
of Tudor stability, and exacted as condition the death 
of the innocent Warwick whose blood sealed Katherine's 
marriage to Prince Henry. Neither by foreign princes 
nor by his own people was any higher sanction sought than 
the King's ability to maintain his dynasty on the throne. 

An Italian who travelled in England in 1500, remarked 
that if the succession was at all in dispute, the question 
was settled by recourse to arms.*^ There were many who 
believed, in spite of the stability of Henry VII's rule, 
that at his death the Duke of Buckingham or Edmond 
de la Pole might seek the throne. 

The possibility of claimants appearing with as good 
a right as the Tudors always existed, and Henry VIII's 
cruel persecution of any possible pretenders, at the time 
when he seemed most firmly seated, came from this ap- 
prehension, and showed that in his own mind, at least, 
he never felt entirely secure. 

Beyond this loomed another peril. Thomas Cromwell 
when in Parliament had opposed the war with France on 

* All references will be found at the end of the book. 



6 TUDOR IDEALS 

the ground of danger to the royal person. If the King 
were killed, civil war would be likely to ensue. Disorder 
through doubt of succession remained a spectre for all 
the Tudors, and apologists have found herein the defence 
for Henry VIII's matrimonial experiences. The nation, 
haunted by its memories of civil war, gave the most indul- 
gent support to the extravagant assertions of royal 
authority. The City of London extended its hearty wel- 
come to the royal mistress, and Nicholas Udal, head- 
master of Eton, composed verses for Anne Boleyn, where 
with more truth than his servile mind could foresee, he 
looked forward to her issue to guard England and the 
faith from danger. ^ 

The nation's fears centred on anarchy brought about 
by uncertainty in the transmission of the crown, acqui- 
esced in the preservation of order by the most disorderly 
means. When other hopes to secure a regular inheritance 
failed. Parliament gave the King power to bequeath 
the crown by will and promised allegiance to his illegiti- 
mate succession. Henry had made all his plans to declare 
heir his natural son the Duke of Richmond, and of 
marrying him to his half-sister Mary. 

The looseness of such ideas was not peculiar to Eng- 
land but rather to an age of unsettled sanctions whose 
social structure was itself in rapid transformation. Where 
power was the goal other considerations became of slight 
consequence. In Scotland the future Earl of Murray, 
borrowing the argument from Knox that kingly authority 
emanated from virtue and not from birth, in order to 
press his own claim tried to induce Mary Stuart to ap- 
point as her successor one of the royal blood irrespec- 
tive of his legitimacy. 3 At a time when everything 
conspired to magnify the power of the crown its origin 
had become a matter almost of indifference. 

If legal right could be altered to fit circumstance, the 
reverse also held true. Henry VIII felt no hesitation in 
having his two daughters declared illegitimate by one 



THE SANCTION OF POWER 7 

Parliament, while a later one without reinstating the two 
princesses to their lawful birth, yet placed both in the or- 
der of royal succession. The legal position of the sisters 
so curiously different passed through the same vicissitudes. 
Edward VI in his "Device for the Succession," did not even 
mention them, though in the final settlement, their title 
after being recited was declared inadequate, on the triple 
ground of illegitimacy, half blood to the king, and likeli- 
hood of marrying a stranger born out of the realm.* 
But royal authority perished with its personal existence 
and Edward VI could bind his succession as little as his 
father had been able to do. 

Though almost any excess was tolerated on the part of 
the sovereign during his life, natural laws reasserted them- 
selves on his decease. Popular approval which had al- 
ways to be sought between two reigns then favoured the 
rightful claimant, as Northumberland realized when he 
tried to replace a Tudor by a Dudley dynasty. Yet a 
princess less strong-willed than Mary might not have 
successfully asserted her rights; while one possessed 
of less duplicity than Elizabeth, could in the early un- 
stable years of her reign, have aroused an opposition 
which might have deprived her of life and crown. Both, 
aided by circumstance and natural right, needed ability 
to grasp the royal sceptre. 

In the early years of her reign Elizabeth's sanction 
rested on insecure ground. As the majority of the na- 
tion was still catholic, the issue of Anne Boleyn could 
not be lawful to most Englishmen. Behind the friendly 
overtures from Philip and the Pope, on her accession, 
lay the covert threat that she could reign only with 
their support. With rare deceit she kept Rome and 
Spain in expectant suspense until she felt herself on firm 
ground. Jesuits might dispute her title, and Cardinal 
Allen many years later still taunted her with her birth,^ 
but their aspersions only added to her popularity. 
She herself when Queen, perhaps to avoid raking up 



8 TUDOR IDEALS 

old controversies, took no steps to clear her mother's 
memory, though she had the order of royal succes- 
sion changed from "lawful" to "natural" issue on the 
ground of the former being insulting to her. Leicester's 
enemies imputed this to his intrigues, in order to assert 
in case of the Queen's death that one of his illegitimate 
children was hers.^ 

Characteristic of a period of strong personal rule, 
was the idea running through the age that the primary 
sanction of power came less from blood or hereditary 
right, than from its exercise. Royalty had to justify 
itself, and its source was secondary before the accom- 
plished fact. Although Elizabeth might seem to have 
given new stability to the crown, it could still be main- 
tained that "the sword hath always been better than 
half the title to get, establish or maintain a kingdom. " ^ 
The Jesuit Robert Parsons, author of "A Conference 
about the Next Succession," written toward the end of 
the Virgin Queen's reign, declared — "whatsoever a prince's 
title be, if once he be settled in the Crown and admitted 
by the Commonwealth, every man is bound to settle 
his conscience to obey the same in all that lawfully he 
may command and this without examination of his 
title." Ordinary rules could not be applied to princes' 
titles. Ties of blood though of great importance in them- 
selves, did not bind the Commonwealth, if weightier 
reasons existed. The only essentials to reign were fitness 
and the ability to fulfil duty.^ 

Such was the Renaissance theory of the prince who 
rested the sanction of his power, not on divine law or 
birth, though ready to invoke both, but on his own 
strength and popular approval, expressed in England by 
Parliament. Nor can better proof be given of the prince's 
personal opinion of the sacredness of royalty than Henry 
the Eighth's execution of two queens. 

This spirit is met with in the Elizabethan Drama. 
Marlowe's Tamburlaine by sheer force of will plans to 



THE SANCTION OF POWER 9 

master the world. He makes no secret of his own hum- 
ble origin, 

"I am a lord for so my deeds shall prove 
And yet a shepherd by my parentage." 

I Tamb. I, II, 34. 

When he bids his younger son be brave he tells him 

"If thou exceed thy elder brothers' worth 
And shine in complete virtue more than they 
Thou shall be king before them." 

II Tamb. I, III, 49. 

In this was expressed the political idea of the age, 
whether represented by Henry VII or by Tamburlaine. 
Hereditary right was secondary to forceful ability. The 
best title to a throne lay in the strength to seize it and 
to wield the royal power. Some have read in Marlowe 
the influence of Machievelli's ideas. The Florentine 
was highly appreciated in England, but it is superfluous 
to call on his influence to explain such incentives. Rea- 
sons which then stirred the hearts of men needed no phi- 
losophy for their genesis. 

Frank admiration for success irrespective of means\ 
to attain it is characteristic of every period in rapid \ 
transition, where former standards unable to meet the 
strain imposed upon them bend and break. Shake- 
speare expressed this in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona.' * 
When Valentine banished from Milan turns outlaw and 
captures the Duke who had exiled him, the latter, by 
no means incensed, admires his daring. "I do applaud 
thy spirit, Valentine, and think thee worthy of an Em- 
press' love." 

The immense prestige acquired by the Crown in the 
Sixteenth Century, seems at first but little compatible 
with this view. The body of doctrine and of ceremony 
then evolved to enhance the glamour of kingship, by 
attributing to it a divine authority, appears in contra- 



lo TUDOR IDEALS 

diction with the realism underlying the conception of the 
royal power. In reality it confirms this idea. The dignity 
of the crown arose not from its origin but from its exer- 
cise. It rested not on an invisible lineage, but on a visi- 
ble authority. The two views ran parallel courses, and 
no conflict between them could arise. The Tudors, ac- 
cepting the homage of divine right, trusted only in the 
reality of their power. 

The illegitimacy attending Tudor origins, the perplex- 
ities of Tudor marriages, and the difficulties of Tudor 
successions, were among the causes which later contrib- 
uted to increasing the power of the people. A dynasty 
with equal authority but with clearer title and heirs, 
might have concerned itself less with seeking parliamen- 
tary approval. Henry VII demanded the confirmation 
of his title from Parliament. Henry VIII, notorious 
tyrant though he was, often showed it almost deferential 
respect. A monarch so imperious as Elizabeth, yielded 
to it on occasion with the good grace of her political 
sagacity. Although popular power was unripened, the 
lesson was not lost. In spite of disturbances and oc- 
casional revolts, no nation has ever proved more sub- 
missive nor more loyal than was England to the Tudors. 
They were obeyed willingly because they represented the 
strong rule that was wanted and not because of their 
lineage or blood right to mount the throne. 



II. THE THEORY OF MAJESTY 

In Fifteenth Century England, when the power of the 
crown sank to its lowest ebb, the spectacle of royal 
dignity was little enhanced by the succession of English 
monarchs rebelled against, dethroned and murdered. 
Where the king commanded so little respect, those of 
his blood were often left devoid of any remnant of pres- 
tige. Philip de Comines recalled members of the House 
of Lancaster poorer than beggars in the street and had 
seen the Duke of Exeter, brother-in-law of Edward IV, 
trailing barefooted and nameless in the train of the Duke 
of Burgundy.^ 

Before the Renaissance, a king even when he possessed 
strong personality, was hardly more than an exalted 
noble whose authority remained strictly limited by 
feudal and church rights. A family of obscure origin 
in two generations, raised the crown as an institu- 
tion to a height hitherto unknown. Circumstance and 
theory alike helped to persuade the Tudor prince of his 
omnipotence. The conception of Roman law entering 
with the new ideas and welcomed by those in authority, 
placed all power in the prince's hands and from him 
derived all power. The classical influence with its 
point of view so advantageous to the crown, assured 
Renaissance learning a welcome at court. With these 
views the conception of centralized monarchy grew to 
novel dimensions and the person and power of the prince 
expanded with their new importance. 

What brought about this sudden elevation in the royal 
power? The answer is not to be found either in Roman 
law whose introduction had been unsuccessfully at- 
tempted in the Fifteenth Century, or in the Tudor abil- 



12 TUDOR IDEALS 

ity to create such an ideal of kingship. The cause lay- 
rather in the combination of two separate circumstances 
neither sufficient in itself but whose coincidence ef- 
fected the result. The first was in the immense expan- 
sion of life which came as the result of a quickened vi- 
tality before new opportunity, and raised England from 
an isolated provincial state to the dignity of a great 
power. The second arose from the fact that in this 
new state in process of rapid evolution, with novel 
horizons lying before the individual, the various ave- 
nues of energy were still in their rudimentary beginning. 
The church whose power was soon to be humbled, 
was almost the only institution presenting a tradition 
of venerable continuity. All other public services or 
paths of distinction, parliament, army, navy, diplo- 
macy, all, save perhaps the bench with its varying 
vicissitudes, were in the making during the Sixteenth 
Century, and for the most part without the rigidity or 
prestige of an established organization. Men rushed, 
so to speak, into a void and carved out careers which 
for better or worse had not yet been moulded by the 
impress of fixed tradition. Personality grew as individ- 
uals moved into wider orbits. During the interval, be- 
fore conditions had simmered down to shape themselves 
into the novel structure, the idea of kingship reaped 
advantage from such chaos and in the beginning became 
its main beneficiary. 

In an unsettled and rapidly shifting age an accepted 
institution which represents force, law, and order, always 
offers a rallying point. The Tudors, moreover, seized 
the crown while England was emerging from the Mid- 
dle Ages, and were able to establish themselves without 
being obliged to encounter the pressure of movements 
still unborn which were later to act as limitations 
to the royal power. The opposition they met with 
was easily overridden, and for one brief period in English 
history, the prince felt himself virtually without re- 



THE THEORY OF MAJESTY 13 

striction able to follow the inclinations of his personal 
will. While years had still to elapse before the country- 
was able to disentangle the chaos caused by its own 
over rapid expansion, no such restriction weighed on 
the prince whose instruments of authority already 
created, gave him a clear start. During that interval 
the crown became the centre of all power. Without having 
to snatch this from others it merely stepped into the open 
gap and unquestioned and unchallenged, assumed bound- 
less rights and prerogatives. The king arrived, so to 
speak, first on the field, and those who found him there 
not only accepted his title without demur but helped 
to enhance his authority. 

Amid such circumstances the Tudor theory of majesty 
was born. Learned men, and men of law subservient 
as always to established authority, defended the prac- 
tice, exalted the power of the prince, and placed him on 
a pinnacle which, save in oriental lands, had never been 
attained since the days of imperial Rome. The Tudors 
only repeated what the Caesars had done and England, 
like Rome, remained well-nigh indifferent to the sanction 
of the title save as it rested on fact. It magnified the 
power of the prince and placed him above the law. "From 
the prince as from a perpetual wellspring, cometh among 
the people the flood of all that is good or evil," ^ wrote 
Sir Thomas More, the most independent mind of his 
age, and the one furthest removed from the spirit of 
flattery. 

Such ideas had hardly been noticeable in the founder 
of the dynasty. Henry VII, modern in his political real- 
ism, remained curiously medieval in form, and purposely 
preferred his outward garb to be still enmeshed in the 
fabric of the past. Perhaps to conceal the force of his 
innovations and make his changes as imperceptible as 
possible, the first Tudor sought to attach himself to the 
past rather than to appear as a reformer. Henry VIII 
mounting the throne felt none of his father's hesitations. 



14 TUDOR IDEALS 

In addition to the assurance which youth, popularity, 
and inherited power gave him, he was also the benefi- 
ciary of circumstance, able to take advantage of the new 
position of England restored by his father, and the new 
power of kingship raised high by the spirit of the age. 
Everything conspired to enhance his prestige and au- 
thority. A fresh pomp and ceremonial was devised to 
fit new circumstances, and the outward forms of dig- 
nity altered to meet these novel conditions. The early 
designation of the king as "Your Grace" was replaced 
by the more exalted title of "Your Majesty" to which 
"Sacred" was soon to be added. 

Despite the boast that unlike continentals. English- 
men were not slaves, a new spirit of servility previously 
unknown grew up around the king. The royal dignity 
had risen so suddenly to so unparalleled a height, that 
all sense of proportion was lost sight of by courtiers 
eager to prove their submissive obedience. At a time when 
other standards which might have served as correctives 
against such pliability had been crushed into decay, 
veneration for the crown alone survived and, from 
highest to lowest, all flattered the king. In the words 
of a French Ambassador he became a "statue for idola- 
try,"^ while adulation was so universal as hardly to ex- 
cite comment. 

The extravagance characteristic of the age showed 
its worst side in the degradation of character this led to. 
The king himself in the pride of his position, lost all 
feeling for the ordinary decencies of life, and celebrated 
the news of Katherine of Aragon's death by attending a 
court dance. His conduct after the execution of Anne 
Boleyh was no less revolting. He felt himself above the 
law, unable to do wrong. His kingdom was his property, 
entire and absolute. He provided for his own death by 
conferring the goverment of England on the executors 
of his will and making a trust of the realm. 

Foreigners marvelled at the servile deference of the 



THE THEORY OF MAJESTY 15 

church dignitaries in his presence.^ The royal princesses 
knelt before their father in accordance with an etiquette 
which prescribed that no one must speak to the Prince 
"but in adoration and kneeling. "^ Later, Queen Elizabeth 
expected all at court to fall on their knees before her.^ 
Beyond the throne a halo fell on those near the royal 
person. Typical of this are the circumstances attending 
the arrest of Wolsey. The Cardinal had refused to sub- 
mit himself to the Earl of Northumberland who came for 
such purpose, but did so at once to Master Walsh on 
the ground, though the latter was without warrant, 
that he belonged to the king's privy chamber, remarking 
that "the worst person there is a sufficient warrant to 
arrest the greatest peer of this realm by the king's only 
commandment without any commission. " ^ In this spirit 
Marlowe makes Edward the Second rebuke the unruly 
nobles who had taunted Gaveston. 

"Were he a peasant, being my minion 
I'll make the proudest of you stoop to him." 

Edw. II, I, IV. 30. 

It was likely enough the idea of the omnipotence of 
royalty, far more than any medieval tradition of laxity in 
such matters, that allowed a monarch so imperious as 
Henry VIII to marry outside the royal circle. While the 
French and English Courts had been shocked by his sister 
wedding a man "low-born" like the Duke of Suffolk and 
the king took from her the plate and jewels given her on 
her first alliance Henry VIII 's practice in marrying 
women with no personal prestige, was that of Byzantine 
Emperors and oriental despots, too exalted for the lineage 
of a consort not to be a matter of indifference. The prince 
was higher than the law and as such could do what he 
willed.^ 

More cautious than her father yet quite as impe- 
riously minded Elizabeth restrained her own affections 



i6 TUDOR IDEALS 

though she told Castelnau that if Leicester had been of 
royal birth she would have married him.^ 

Where different circumstances brought about the 
exaltation of the Throne it was not surprising, that an age 
which blefnded politics with religion should have sought 
in divine right the highest sanction for royalty. The 
origin of this idea was probably an adaptation from 
antiquity. A monarch with such exalted convictions of 
his prerogative as Henry VIII naturally seized on a 
theory congenial to his own inclinations. Though able 
on occasion to parade sound constitutional doctrine, his 
acts refer to the "Kingly power given him by God."^" 
Earlier opinions inherited from scholastic pliilosophy 
of kingship resting on popular approval were forgotten. 
The forceful Tudor absolutism was no congenial soil for 
such ideas. The dogma of the subjects' obedience by 
Godly injunction was well implanted, and the belief in the 
divine nature of royal authority passed into the stock 
ideas of the age. Elizabeth began the manifesto pub- 
lished to explain the motives of giving aid to the people 
of the Low Countries, by stating that kings and princes 
were not bound to "render the reason for their actions to 
any other but to God."" 

The same question came up in a more practical form 
with the trial of Mary Stuart. Elizabeth's reluctance to 
order the execution, was caused far more by her wish not 
to invalidate the divine right than by any feeling of 
commiseration. The argument brought up that outside 
his own domains a king was but a private person unable 
to exercise royal powers, and that it was impossible for 
Mary and her son to reign at the same time, made the 
execution feasible, without invalidating the sanction ot 
the Virgin Queen's rule. 

A body of legal opinion grew up during the Sixteenth 
Century to support the most extravagant pretensions of 
royalty. The prince was described as divinely ordained 
to be shepherd of his people and the image of God in his 



THE THEORY OF MAJESTY 17 

realm. ^2 a French jurist Belloy, much read in England, 
maintained that although the heir to the throne might be a 
lunatic or a degenerate yet "he must be sacred and holy 
with us and admitted without contradiction to his inherit- 
ance which God and nature hath laid upon him."^^ Not 
only did divine law require subjects to obey their prince/^ 
Richard Crompton, a bencher of the Inner Temple, went 
so far as to declare that since kings were ordained to gov- 
ern, subjects must submit to all their ordinances though 
these should be against the word of God.^^ 

It is only fitting to say that not all took such extreme 
views. In Scotland where the royal authority was weaker, 
the political ideas of thinkers like William Major and 
Buchanan were akin to the theory of elective monarchy. 
Thomas More's resistance to such pretensions remains an 
English glory and Hugh Latimer preached an obedience 
which did not transgress the divine law.^^ Brynklow took 
a similar view. Stubbes in spite of his Puritan conscience, 
sustained a more submissive opinion. In his belief, 
although a prince enacted laws against God yet the sub- 
ject ought not to rebel but submit life and lands to the 
royal will as otherwise he resisted the divine command. ^^ 
Anglican divines steered, as usual, the middle course, 
Thomas Cooper maintaining that although a Christian 
prince cannot forbid what God commands, yet that the 
Deity remained indifferent to many things where the 
prince's rights were above dispute.^^ 

Men of letters took without question, the political ideas 
current around them and gave these poetical shape. The 
theory of divine right encountered no hesitations among 
them. Bishop Bale could say — 

"In his own realm a King is judge over all 

By God's appointment and none may judge him again 
But the Lord himself; in this the Scripture is plain 

He that condemneth a King, condemneth God without 
doubt." 

King John, Edit. Cam. Soc. P. 90. 



i8 TUDOR IDEALS 

Such views were especially congenial to the poets, who 
with the extravagant expression characteristic of the 
age tried to represent the king as above mortal considera- 
tions. The prince stood so high above the law that even 
crime lost with him its reprehensible character. With 
arguments which may have borne in mind Henry VIII, 
Greene makes the villain Ateukin urge James IV to murder 
his wife on the ground that 

"It is no murder in a king 
To end another's life to save his own 
For you are not as common people be 
Who die and perish with a few men's tears 
But if you fail the state doth whole default 
The realm is rent in twain.^^" 

Writers for courtly circles like Lyly professed to regard 
the actions of royalty as being only of divine concern. 2" 
Even a bohemian like Marlowe causes Dido to reply to the 
suggestion that her wish to make iEneas sovereign might 
not be well received. 

"Shall vulgar peasants storm at what I do 
The ground is mine that gives them sustenance 
The air wherein they breathe, the water, fire 
All that they have, their lands, their goods, their lives." 

Dido, IV, IV, 71, sq.. 

Like his contemporaries, Shakespeare expressed the idea 
of the sacredness of royalty without giving reason to 
suppose that it was foreign to his own political convictions. 
He accepted it, in the same way as he accepted other 
current beliefs and prejudices of his age. In the "Winter's 
Tale" Camillo refuses to strike the anointed king. In 
"Hamlet" the king says to Laertes "there's such divinity 
doth hedge a king," and MacDuff cries in horror when he 
learns of Duncan's murder 



THE THEORY OF MAJESTY 19 

"Most sacreligious murder hath broke up 
The Lord's anointed temple." 

The theories evolved to magnify the royal power, 
and the extravagant praise showered on the prince were 
manifestations of the patriotic loyalty of the age which 
incarnated the nation in its sovereign. The spirit of 
passionate devotion which Queen Elizabeth inspired, 
called for effusions which similar in tone are not to be 
mistaken for mere flattery. The prince was regarded as 
the nation's image and when Peele likens the Queen's 
beauty to Venus and addresses her as Juno's peer and 
Minerva's mate^^ he symbolized in her the might of 
England. Spenser's lavish praise was hardly less ori- 
ental.* Even the critical Puttenham was unabashed to 
declare that the queen easily surpassed all earlier or later 
poets.22 

The theory of majesty received its highest expression in 
the Sixteenth Century. Jurists and poets united to express 
the divine nature of royalty and invest it with a glamour 
which in England has never since been attained. Freedom 
from restraint and the absence of what later became 
known as good taste, gave rein to the magnificent extrav- 
agances of the time. In word and spirit the highest was 
given the highest due, and the age remained the richer 
for such worship. The pedigree of the ideas which led 
Charles I to the scaffold, can be traced to the theory 
of majesty expressed in Tudor England. 

* Admiral Togo's message to the Mikado ascribing his victory of Tshushima 
to the imperial virtues would have been well understood in Tudor England. 



III. THE ROYAL AUTHORITY 

Beneath its Gothic surface, the England which emerged 
from the Wars of the Roses passed through an evolution so 
silent at first as to mislead men into the belief that little 
had changed. During the civil wars, municipal life had 
been able to pursue its own development. At a time when 
the feudal nobles were destroying each other a new com- 
mercial class was arising. To this class who sought 
security for their possessions, Henry VII's ideas of stable 
centralized government appealed and its rise coincided 
with that of the new dynasty. 

It had been the deliberate policy of the first Tudor to 
make his reign appear as the continuation of Lancastrian 
rule. Some historians have therefore seen in it the end of 
the Middle Ages rather than the birth of modern England. 
But its medievalism was a husk. Only superficially did 
Henry VII conform himself to the practice of the past. 
His far reaching ideas of statecraft inconspicuously were 
laying the foundations of the new centralized state in 
which the Crown became the rallying point for instincts 
of order which are inherent to man. 

While the nation passed through its difficult transfor- 
mation, the power of the Crown alone stood out as the 
barrier which kept the country from anarchy. A sceptre 
may be weakly grasped by a prince whose right to it is 
unchallenged, but this becomes impossible for one who is 
his own ancestor. By its very nature the rule of the first 
Tudor had to be strong in order to justify its usurpation. 
But beyond fiscal exactions the king interfered little in the 
lives of his subjects. His rule so personal in its origin, 
became impersonal in its display of authority. The rec- 
ords of the age are scanty, but there is nothing to sug- 



THE ROYAL AUTHORITY 21 

gest in them the wilfulness of his son. Toward his own 
subjects, contact remained distant and detached, exercised 
through a bureaucratic machinery. His great revolution 
was the introduction of order into England. Power, he 
collected in the same way as his treasure and transmitted 
both in legacy to his son. 

The characteristics of Tudor Monarchy became fixed in 
the direct rule of the prince through his appointed dele- 
gates and in the equality of all subjects before the law. 
The conception of the Crown was one of state omnipotence 
centred in the person of the prince. Royal authority being 
too exalted to admit of distinctions beneath it, the imme- 
diate effect of absolutism tended toward what would 
to-day be styled as democratic. The benefits of this were 
most noticeable where the prince became impersonal and 
when his own caprices did not direct his action. Even 
the tyranny of Henry VIII set in motion a machinery 
acting on all alike, ordering the Council of the North 
to grant justice to the poorest man against the greatest 
lord. 

In this sense the Tudors open the door toward our own 
times in the evolution of the modern state. The excess of 
instruments of authority which Henry VIII found on 
his accession created a unique situation in English history. 
Theory and practice having together raised the kingly 
power to its most exalted pinnacle, circumstance endowed 
it with a wealth of means hitherto unknown. During the 
silent years of preparation the material growth of England 
had accompanied that of the throne. The new feeling of 
security provided a fresh link between prince and people. 
The latter still unaccustomed to the novelty of order, and 
the privilege of peaceful existence, welcomed the assump- 
tion of powers which had rendered this possible. The 
growth of the Crown in its authority coincided with that 
of the country in its wealth. Whatever touched the king 
touched England, and prince and subject became related 
as they have never been before or since. The most inti- 



22 TUDOR IDEALS 

mate circumstances of royal life were thus directly asso- 
ciated with vast movements extending through the land 
and moulding the course of its history. 

The reactions of personal rule are met with in the re- 
sponse to the forces of the age, of those who lived in the 
prince's close proximity. Henry VIII, far more than he 
realized, was the tool of circumstance. The vicissitudes 
of his matrimonial experiences also represented the strug- 
gle of different factions around him. The religious currents 
traversing the Sixteenth Century which stirred many to 
sacrifice, were utilized at Court as instruments for selfish 
ambition and became still more personal, when enmeshed 
in the whims of a king's fancy they effected a reform which 
changed the destiny of England. Great events depend on 
the coincidence of causes. If certain of these seem fortui- 
tous, deeper currents not always visible are associated by 
their reactions upon them. 

The peculiarity of the Sixteenth Century lay in the per- 
son of the prince being the pivot of both accident and de- 
sign, the connecting link between the great forces of the 
age and their chance expression. The irony of history is 
nowhere more ostentatious than in its absurd association 
of the most intimate proclivities of the prince as the nec- 
essary channel for accomplishing a religious revolution. 
In the situation which allowed a poor creature like Nan 
Boleyn to be the playball of fortune, and to influence by 
herself and through her daughter, the whole course of 
English history, lay the essential novelty of the time. 

Through the prince's personality, was reflected the 
struggle of great forces into which were woven some of the 
noblest and basest elements in mankind. Amid the 
medley of circumstances that ensued, anyone in accord- 
ance with his angle of vision or prejudice, can read almost 
any interpretation into the character of the king, and fit 
the traits of his nature to suit almost any theory. One 
thing only is impossible, and that is, to dissociate the 
reactions of the sovereign's private life from that of his 



THE ROYAL AUTHORITY 23 

subjects, or fail to recognize the influence exercised thereby 
on English history. 

When the first Tudor had picked up the crown in the 
dust of the battlefield his native piety reinforced by policy 
made him the readier to respect an ancient established 
institution like the church. Had circumstances been 
otherwise it is inconceivable for a nature so cautious as 
that of Henry VII to have risked a breach with Rome. 
But it is no less inconceivable for his son to have done so 
without the inheritance of authority he had received from 
his father. If the rupture with the Pope was thus, in a 
sense, accidental, its occurrence was only rendered possible 
by an expansion of instruments of power such as had 
previously been non-existent. Power breeds power and the 
incentive lay in providing a direct means for increasing 
this. It is unlikely that the break was solely due to the 
king's wish to marry Anne Boleyn and find an heir, or that 
the possibility of expanding to the utmost his own au- 
thority through this alliance did not suggest itself. The 
divorce, however desirable, provided a tangible reason for 
the elevation of the Crown. 

The opportunities of kingly power became influenced 
by a constructive design. The nation at first cherished no 
marked wish for the king to assert his supremacy in the 
Church. England as a whole was a religious country, but 
its feeling was instinctive and traditional rather than 
conscious. It was ready to acquiesce in whatever the 
king did so long as he represented authority and men's 
immediate interests were not affected by his changes. 
The Country if not indifferent, was still largely inarticulate 
in its mode of expression, and lacked the organization or 
leadership to centralize any opposition beyond isolated 
movements which remained sporadic and easily sup- 
pressed. Where later these grew up they were provincial 
and local, weighted with the odium of foreign inspiration. 
The royal power thus benefited by the weakness of its 
enemies as well as by its own design. To the nation the 



24 TUDOR IDEALS 

machinery of the Crown represented a strong conscious 
force handicapped by no restrictions and standing for 
stabihty and order. The national unity was centred 
in the throne and when Henry VIII boasted that he 
was king, pope and emperor in his own domains, he 
counted with reason on the submissive obedience of his 
subjects. 

Incarnating the state, the king arrogated the right to 
control its belief. Assuming the power of the papacy he 
took over the determination of his subjects* convictions 
and could declare that the Bible was only to be read "as 
the prince and the policy of the realm shall think conven- 
ient so to be tolerated." The roles were now reversed. 
Instead of the Church encroaching on secular matters the 
prince directed the creed. A new conception of the Crown 
evolved by circumstance but deriving its example from 
pagan Rome, now regulated the lives of British Christians. 
The Venetian Ambassador Michele could report to his 
state that the example and authority of the sovereign was 
all powerful with the English, and that religion was valued 
as inculcating the duty due to the prince. His subjects 
believed as he believed. They would be as zealous fol- 
lowers of the Mohammedan or Jewish faith if the king 
professed either or commanded them to do so.^ 

The spirit of religious intolerance which prevailed was 
paradoxically due to this sudden irruption of secular 
authority. With its newly assumed powers the Crown 
was ambitious to extirpate the last roots of ecclesiastical 
independence and prove that it could perform spiritual 
functions no less well than the Church whose easy indul- 
gence dating from the early days of the Renaissance had 
now to yield before a harsher practice. Revolt and tyr- 
anny went hand-in-glove. Churchmen were regarded as 
subjects of the Crown taking out commissions like other 
officers and religion became merely one side of the State. 
The frequent shifts of men like Gardiner, Paget and Cecil 
cannot be laid down solely to indifference, fear or ambition. 



THE ROYAL AUTHORITY 25 

but were due to belief as well — sincere belief in the royal 
supremacy to decide questions of faith. 

The Sixteenth Century Englishman was not laxer in his 
creed because of such compliance. Religious observance 
was universal and far from perfunctory. It was a duty 
toward the State. Elizabeth exacted it and continued her 
father's policy of regarding churchmen as mere officers of 
the Crown, writing in famous words to the Bishop of 
Ely "By God I will unfrock you." Bishops themselves 
defended such ideas. The break from Rome after the 
disorder of reform under Edward VI, and the brief Catho- 
lic revival, led to the reconstruction of the Church edifice 
under royal authority. The apologists of the new Anglican 
church were conscientiously imbued with these ideas. 
Royal authority commanded even in religion.^ By such 
reasoning men felt no misgiving in changing their ritual 
with their sovereign. 

In matters of faith the Sixteenth Century presents the 
odd paradox of the greatest suppleness contrasted with a 
fervour of faith and a spirit of martyrdom. But the ideas 
of the martyrs had been moulded by convictions born 
in other ages. Those most typical of the life of their time 
followed the prince in ready compliance to his wishes. 



IV. THE PRINCE AND HIS SUBJECTS 

Once the royal power had been fully acknowledged, the 
prince's relations with his subjects were simple enough and 
except on ceremonial occasions quite unrestrained. Henry 
VII was, by inclination, the most aloof of monarchs whose* 
pale and careworn features are hardly more remote to-day 
than they were to most of his contemporaries. Yet an 
anonymous Italian traveller relates that twice he dined at 
court with between six and seven hundred persons.^ The 
Italian was almost certainly without personal importance 
but found nothing strange in attending royal banquets. 
Such popular access was not the least significant feature 
of life around the throne. At a time when the kingly office 
reached its highest pinnacle there was no difficulty for any 
subject to secure access at least to the outer reaches of 
royalty. When Ralph Hythloday fresh from Utopia is 
advised to go to "some king's court" and relate his story 
to the prince, such possibility was not merely Utopian. 

The hierarchy around the throne had not yet assumed 
rigidity and vestiges of former disorder, handed down 
from a more primitive age, could still be found in the free- 
dom of relations prevailing. Katherine of Aragon counted 
her husband's linen. The expansion of the royal power 
had been so sudden that there was no time to evolve the 
infinite gradations of rank or those barriers of ceremony 
which at lesser moments mark the ingenuity of small 
minds. Moreover the close intimacy of prince and people 
was favoured as a matter of policy. A dynasty like the 
Tudor, new on the throne, and without the loyalty or in- 
timacy derived from long hereditary association, would 
naturally seek to draw its popularity from the people. 
Imbued as was Henry VIII with the sense of his own 

26 



THE PRINCE AND HIS SUBJECTS 27 

grandeur, he made no artificial attempt to separate him- 
self from his subjects. An easy familiarity marked his 
intercourse. When the Princess Mary was still a baby 
in arms, he would himself carry her into the Presence 
Chamber and show her to the courtiers and foreign envoys. 
No one could be more affable when he chose and few 
pictures are more pleasing than that of the young King 
walking arm in arm with Thomas More in his Chelsea 
garden. 

Nor was such easy intercourse peculiar to the Tudors. In 
Scotland the frequent peregrinations of the court from one 
small town to another, drew king and subjects together 
and made court incidents a matter of common knowledge.^ 
In England numerous, festivities provided occasion for 
bringing the populace into close contact with royalty. 
The humblest were freely admitted to witness the revelries, 
and when on one famous occasion at Richmond, the 
crowd broke up the pageant and stripped courtiers and 
king almost to the skin, the latter in spite of his imperious 
pride treated the matter jocosely. 

In restricting the vision of the past to undue utilitarian- 
ism one neglects aspects of life which without purpose 
in any ultimate sense withal demand their satisfaction. 
By an ancient convention greatness needs its outward sign, 
and in all ages the love of pomp has created a setting to 
gratify this sense and make it coincide with the instinct of 
pleasure. Since the early Middle Ages the taste for 
pageantry offered occasion for the mighty to indulge 
their own fondness for display and provide at the same 
time for the amusement of those below them. When the 
value of the individual is depressed into the social unit 
in which he is classed, his importance derives from this 
more than from his personal merit, with the result that 
greater significance is attached to ceremonial occasions. 
Festivities therefore assumed a value out of all proportion 
to their inherent nature. At court they impressed and 
amused the people and created a link not without its 



28 TUDOR IDEALS 

purpose in binding together by a common interest different 
classes of the population. How is it otherwise possible to 
explain the fact that, during the reign of a prince so fond 
of his privacy as Henry VII so much attention should have 
been paid to spectacles and festivities. 

Already, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester had used his 
duties as Great Chamberlain to organize pageants whose 
splendour impressed the imagination of the early chronic- 
lers. In the reign of Henry VIII the pages of Hall and 
Cavendish are filled far more with descriptions of pag- 
eantry than with political events. It seemed appropriate 
for the lives of the great to be taken up by magnificent 
pleasures. The English people found more interest in 
such spectacles than in the dull acts of Parliament. 

Where old traditions are not of a nature to threaten any 
policy or interest within the state, they survive freely 
amid the new and acquire fresh vigour in accordance with 
the taste of the day. The men who boldly broke down 
whatever blocked the path of their ambition, were keen to 
preserve ancient amusements and usages when these did 
not affect their personal interests. Rulers enlarged the 
festive occasions of life, utilizing these in order to create an 
atmosphere of grandeur around their own acts. New ideas 
did not affect the outward circumstances of existence. 
The wish for the grandiose was generalized, while to add 
personal incentive, elaborate ceremonial festivities were 
organized by obscure officials and artisans whose impor- 
tance and profit was tied up with such occasions. One 
is apt to forget the pressure of numerous hangers-on and 
tradesmen whose opportunity for gain came through 
instilling these tastes. 

The magnificence of Henry VIII was seen to best ad- 
vantage in his entertainments or those arranged for him 
by his Cardinal Minister. When on one occasion Wolsey 
received the king he came with a dozen of his suite dis- 
guised as shepherds for whom a banquet was spread "in so 
gorgeous a sort and costly manner that it was a pleasure 



THE PRINCE AND HIS SUBJECTS 29 

to behold."^ The art and learning of the age were enlisted 
to gratify such tastes. Flemish and Italian artisans lent 
their skill, while scholarship left its stamp on the pag- 
eantry. 

All classes of the population could take part as actors or 
spectators on great festive occasions. When Queen Eliza- 
beth made her triumphal entry into London the houses 
along the route were bedecked with arras, carpets and 
silks. Cheapside was bright with cloth of gold and silver, 
and velvet of all colors, while all the crafts stood in their 
livery from St. Michael to Aldgate. By these spectacles 
a personal contact was established between court and 
people. After such a ceremony, every Londoner could feel 
that at one moment of his life he had been near to his 
sovereign. The queen herself welcomed these occasions 
and the many "progresses" of her reign were perhaps 
undertaken as much from motives of policy as to indulge 
her personal taste for display. 

Royal journeys brought about a wide and familiar 
diffusion of knowledge regarding the ceremonies attending 
the presence of Majesty. Renaissance learning became 
associated in the popular mind with the organization of 
court festivities, and spread a pseudo-classical knowledge 
over the land. When Queen Elizabeth was received in a 
provincial town Hke Norwich, in the procession welcoming 
her, were those who took the part of pagan divinities and 
recited verses to her in Latin and in Greek.^ 

Such ceremonies were the invariable accompaniment of 
a royal visit. When the Queen made her "progress" 
through Suffolk and Norfolk, everywhere nymphs and 
fairies addressed her in the worst classical style.^ 

In "Edward II," Marlowe could describe the pleasures 
of the prince: 

"Music and poetry are his delight 
Therefore I'll have Italian masques by night 
Sweet speeches, comedies and pleasing shows.** 



30 TUDOR IDEALS 

The pomp, the learning, the craftsmanship of the age, 
united in a result which seems to our modern view trivial 
but which even in a utilitarian sense possessed social and 
educational value. The joiners in "Midsummer's Night's 
Dream" had less schooling than modern workmen, but 
they were alive to a realm of fancy which exists no more. 
The blending of all classes in common diversions was to 
have its effect as a civilizing influence by raising the mass, 
teaching it to appreciate other values, and keeping alive 
those bonds of sympathy which united the different 
elements of one nation. Such occasions favoured the ideas 
of the Renaissance spreading through the land till they 
became known to the farmer's boy who grew to man- 
hood in a village on the Avon. 

Apart from jealousy of their own prerogatives, both 
Henry VIII and Elizabeth were in closer human contact 
with their subjects than any monarch before or since on 
the British throne. In one sense this helped to compen- 
sate for the scant authority of representative institutions. 
Among the reasons which contributed to the exaltation of 
the royal power was the identification of the nation with 
its princes. England found itself represented in the person 
of its sovereign far better than by the lawyers and country 
squires often unwillingly sitting in Parliament. The 
qualities which the people discovered in their ruler, his 
love of sport and his exuberant boisterousness were of a 
nature to endear him to all classes. Though the growth of 
the State rendered personal contact more difficult than it 
had been in days when a king administered justice under a 
tree, there were survivals of such earlier relations, if only 
at the Easter Ceremonies when beggars' feet were washed. 
Theoretically, at least, the prince stood in permanent 
relation to his subjects as the corrector of injustice, "to 
see that there be no unpreaching prelates in his realm, nor 
bribing judges, to see to all estates, to provide for the poor, 
to see victuals good cheap. "^ And a popular writer of the 
time could say that the " King is anointed to be a defence 



THE PRINCE AND HIS SUBJECTS 31 

unto the people that they be not oppressed nor over- 
yoked."^ 

In the early years of his reign, Henry VIII had felt heav- 
ily the sense of obligation of his duties. He expressed 
surprise when he heard of Francis I's popularity remark- 
ing that the French had little reason to love a monarch 
who plunged them at once into war. But the settled 
habit of his own power and the growth of his worst in- 
stincts soon rid him of such solicitude. He could after- 
ward tell Marillac, the French Ambassador, that he had a 
miserable people to govern whom he would speedily so 
impoverish that they would not dare to raise their heads 
against him. His idea of England was that of a vast estate 
where he felt able to do as he liked. Although his popu- 
larity waned with his growing tyranny, the royal authority 
remained unbroken to the end. 

The evolution toward equality perhaps originated more 
than is commonly suspected through the State being 
regarded as the personal preserve of the Crown. This 
conviction, common to the Tudors, was less peculiar to 
them than to the age of which they were the instruments. 
Edward VI, boy though he was, entertained the same idea 
of power, and Mary Tudor though more human and far 
more respectable than either her father or her sister, 
shared the same feelings of authority in her wish to bestow 
England on her Spanish husband. How much longer the 
nation would have tolerated such ideas must remain a 
moot question. Ready enough to accept abuses of royal 
authority at home, the people with instinctive nationalism, 
were far less submissive before the risk of foreign dom- 
ination, and the unpopular Spanish policy undoubtedly 
roused public opinion to its danger. 

England was undergoing such rapid changes that the 
relations between Crown and people were unsettled. But 
Mary's early death prevented difficulties coming to a head, 
and Elizabeth from her accession proved astute enough, 
when shaping her course, to avoid the clash between oppos- 



32 TUDOR IDEALS 

ing ideas and thereby delay the struggle till another reign. 
More cautious than her father, the insecurity of her early 
experiences made her set out deliberately to win her 
people's affections. With this in view, she took part in 
May Games and Morris dances. Sir Christopher Hatton 
described her as fishing for men's souls. She possessed 
the political sagacity allowing her under all circumstances 
to make appeal to their love. 

Her greatness came, in being the first modern ruler to 
grasp the fact that the lower was the level of authority the 
more solid became its base. No prince was ever so great 
a courtier of her people.^ Writing to Philip II who 
claimed her gratitude for the Crown she replied that she 
owed this only to her subjects. In her speech to the army 
at Tilbury when Spanish invasion threatened she declared 
that she had always placed her chief strength in their 
loyalty and good will, and in one of her last addresses 
before Parliament she exclaimed, "Though God hath 
raised me high yet this I account the glory of my crown 
that I have reigned with your loves.^ " 

No one dared openly to say so, yet not a few resented 
this quest for popularity. The Queen's rule was little 
relished by many of the English nobility, ^° but innumer- 
able broadsides hawked through the streets remote from 
the flattery of the court,^^ attest the depth of affection 
she inspired in her people. John Stubbes when his right 
hand had been cut off for having petitioned against the 
royal marriage raised his hat with his left and shouted 
" God Save the Queen ! " 

Elizabeth instilled in her subjects' hearts real affection 
along with a feeling of chivalry which was her due as a 
woman. Yet neither her character nor that of her father 
was typically English. Royalty is apt to develop char- 
acteristics of its own, but it would be a gross slander on the 
English nation to discern representative British traits in 
the egregious vanity, duplicity, and ruthlessness, common 
to both monarchs. Their characters were more peculiar to 



THE PRINCE AND HIS SUBJECTS 33 

the Tudor family, to the age and to circumstance, than to 
the land over which they ruled. It could not well be other-' 
wise. Elizabeth's real nationalism came out, in striving 
for the greatness of her kingdom which she did in the full 
measure of her statesmanship. Her representative nature 
found expression in the fact that all her interests were 
identified with its welfare. She herself was as little typic- 
ally English as Napoleon was French. Her tastes, her af- 
fections, her ambitions, were blended with the kingdom 
over which she ruled so wisely. But her personal character 
was peculiar to herself and to the necessities of her position. 

If Elizabeth was shrewd enough to guess the strength 
of the rising tide and flatter the people into loyalty to her 
rule, if she could answer on occasion, that it was the 
prince's duty to hold the highest in equal right with the 
lowest, and that she was as much queen of the one as of 
the other,^^ she was at heart far more conservative in her 
respect for social divisions than her father had ever shown 
himself. With the spirit of Tory democracy, she displayed 
a tendency to support the ancient nobility and it was 
regarded as a sign of the times that she never bestowed 
her favour on a mere new man.^^ 

After the disorder brought about by Henry VIII's revo- 
lutionary changes, a new fabric of stability was growing 
up in England on broader foundations than the old, yet 
mindful of those traditions which invariably accompany 
the rise of any propertied class. Elizabeth felt herself to be 
the leader of this class whose success following the elevation 
of her family to the throne, embraced the most active 
minds in the nation. Its members, with several genera- 
tions behind them, had already adjusted themselves to the 
dignities of their newly acquired rank. In her speech to 
the Lords on her accession, she drew attention to their 
various origins in order to claim loyalty on different 
grounds. The ancient nobility had been able to inherit 
their estates in security, while the others possessed the 
experience of ofBce given them by her father. ^^ 



34 TUDOR IDEALS 

Such distinctions, still true at the beginning of her reign 
were rapidly to diminish in importance. In the famous 
scene between Cecil and Essex, the former prefaced his 
remarks by stating that he was inferior in nobility, but his 
implied superiority in other respects was significant of the 
relative value attached to blood. As a caste, the nobles 
had become a decorative feature of the Court and could 
henceforth safely be employed in the task of government 
without danger to the royal authority. 

Where Elizabeth showed herself to be the true daughter 
of her father, was amid circumstances not immediately 
under the public eye. With her ministers she was arrogant 
and haughty, continually reminding them that she had 
been deep in affairs of state since the cradle. ^^ The aim of 
her policy was more moderate than theirs, as when they 
preceded her in realizing the inevitable struggle with 
Spain. 

In dealing with problems and not men, she had always 
been inclined to caution and compromise. It was when 
she felt herself on firm ground that her native arrogance 
and love of authority were displayed without restraint. 
She had confidence in her own judgment on such occasions, 
"as though our long experience in government had not 
yet taught us to discover what were fit for us to do in 
matters of our state." ^^ The power of the queen lay in the 
ability to impress her personality on everyone. Fortified 
by experience and the prestige of success, she felt able to 
trace her own line of conduct without regard to advice, 
and to stand out, if need be, against all her ministers. 
When their policy in helping the Low Countries was at 
variance with her own, when even Walsingham could write 
that he found her "daily more unapt to embrace any 
matter of weight" ^"^ she would sharply tell her envoy. Sir 
Thomas Heneage, to do as he was bid and refused to be 
bound by what he had told the Dutch about her. She 
wrote in her own hand, "We princes be wary enough of 
our bargains, think you I will be bound by your speech to 



THE PRINCE AND HIS SUBJECTS 35 

make no peace for mine own matters without their con- 
sent." 18 

No more than her father, could she forgive any attempt 
on the part of a subject to assert his independence. Lei- 
cester, despatched by her to the Low Countries, was offered 
practically sovereign powers by the United Provinces in 
the hope of binding the Queen to their cause. For a time, 
it seemed as if her favour sufficed to confer a Crown. 
Leicester's ambitious vanity may well have fondled this 
hope, which Cecil, Walsingham, and Davison all approved. 
But the queen was deeply offended by his accepting a 
dignity which appeared to detract from her own authority. 
The gossip at court that Lady Leicester was going over to 
join her husband with a far greater train and pomp than 
her own, fanned such flames. ^^ She rebuked her favourite 
with the reminder that she had raised him out of the dust 
and said sharply to Sir Thomas Sherley who had tried to 
pacify her — "You know my mind. I may not endure that 
any man shall alter my commission and the authority that 
I gave him upon his own fancies and without me." ^° 

Leicester humbly demeaned himself by the most ful- 
some flattery that no kingdom in the world could make 
amends for her displeasure, and regained her favour. A 
nature less pliable like that of Essex protested with more 
independence than judgment, that he would never serve as 
a servant after the queen had boxed his ears for turning his 
back upon her. He was soon to break his wings against 
the iron determination of his royal mistress who sent him 
to the scaffold and counselled Henry IV of France to 
use a "mild severity" and cut off heads in time. With 
reason the queen could call herself an old fox and remind 
James of Scotland that she could penetrate through 
his intrigues.^i 

The extraordinary mixture of foolish foible and high 
statesmanship displayed by Elizabeth, is best explained 
by the reactions of her rule proving most beneficial as 
they increased in distance from the royal person. As 



36 TUDOR IDEALS 

Queen of England, no sovereign saw with loftier view, and 
few have overcome greater difficulties. As a woman, none 
could be more treacherous, niggardly, and absurd. Only 
a few years before her death, the French Ambassador 
de Maisse, describes his reception by her, clad in a dress 
of silver and scarlet gauze with open sleeves lined with 
red taffetas and small sleeves hanging to the ground. He 
noticed that the front of her dress was cut open very far 
down yet she would open it still farther. Beneath her 
reddish wig hung bangles and pearls. Her neck was 
wrinkled, her teeth yellow and of uneven length, with 
many missing which made it hard to understand her when 
she spoke quickly. But in conversation he found her 
simple and gracious, though still expecting compliments.^^ 
Such was the woman in whose reign were laid the founda- 
tions of modern England's greatness. 



V. THE COURT 

The importance of the court grew with the new power 
of the Crown. In a government so personal as that of 
the Tudors, whoever sought advancement in public 
life was drawn to the court. Like in oriental States, 
nearness to the prince far more than office, conferred 
power, and a lustre all the brighter because in an age 
when ambition ran high, other avenues of distinction 
were non-existent or restricted. The shadow of royal 
authority falling on whoever came into contact with 
the prince, made the court assume far greater impor- 
tance than before, when the power of the Crown had 
been limited, or afterward, when that of other institu- 
tions had increased. Where the life of the nation was 
not anchored to ordinary pursuits, instead of trickling 
through innumerable channels, it was centred around 
the person of the king. The royal lead made itself felt 
far more widely than in statecraft or in manners. 

In the early part of the Sixteenth Century, perhaps, 
for the only time in English history the Crown assumed 
the intellectual and spiritual direction of the country. 

It served yet another purpose. The court was a 
threshold where foreigners were welcome without run- 
ning counter to the insular prejudice which elsewhere 
was prone to reject whatever had not been cast in a 
British mould. The King was fond of foreign ideas 
and fashions for their own sake, and inclined by taste 
and policy to foreigners, who, solely keen to please him, 
offered no menace to his rule. The court performed 
in this a useful function as a national vestibule, where 
novelties from abroad could be weighed and sifted in an 
intermediate stage to test their adaptability to assume 
British denizenship. 

37 



38 TUDOR IDEALS 

Under Henry VII, the court had remained as In- 
conspicuous as the royal power permitted. The first 
Tudor concerned only with the business of state showed 
himself averse to the display of its pomp. His body- 
guard had been created, both as a matter of personal 
security and an instrument of executive policy copied 
from the French example. At his table he kept up 
medieval traditions of hospitality, but he was personally 
indifferent to those spectacular devices so dear to the 
Renaissance which were soon to be utilized for im- 
pressing the imagination with the magnificence of roy- 
alty. His own tastes were too simple to employ the 
arts as a setting to majesty. In the external display 
of his authority Henry VII continued former practices, 
as far as he could, partly by inclination, partly, perhaps, 
the better to disguise the novelty of his own reign. The 
importance of his court was incommensurate with that 
of the Crown and bore no relation to the expanded power 
of royalty. 

A nation in the rapid evolution of growth, marshals 
its forces with uneven speed. The pressure of creative 
strength is never uniform through the country and the 
ratio of progress varies, in accordance with the dis- 
tance from the focal points of power. The Crown at 
the most vigorous moment of its growth, could not 
long leave neglected its own immediate surroundings, 
and it was certain that an effort would soon be made 
to bring these into line, with the expansion of the rest of 
its authority. In the midst of the new growths brought 
in by the Renaissance, at times forming part of these 
and often oddly blended, lingered numerous survivals 
of ancient traditions showing the essential continuity of 
English life. Often the same individual, as if to add to the 
confusion, betrayed contradictory tendencies in his char- 
acter. Lord Surrey, for instance, apart from the modernity 
of his poetic innovations, remained in his medieval sense 
of birth privilege, an anachronism from an older age. 



THE COURT 39 

The court of Henry VIII was a curious mixture of men 
and fashions, intensely alive yet still imperfectly fused 
and embracing all the discrepancies of its varying origins. 
The king brought to its organization his own enormous 
vitality and love of display. With Eastern ideas of the 
equality of all subjects in the dust beneath him, with the 
tastes of the Renaissance for arts and letters, he welcomed 
everyone — musicians, painters and theologians. To the 
creation of his court he added the accompaniments of 
splendour characteristic of the age. By its luxury and 
pomp as well as by its proximity to the prince, it became 
the centre of national activity. The magnificence of 
English courtly surroundings impressed foreign observers, 
and the Papal Legate Chieregati writing in 15 17 to Isabella 
d'Este, could say admiringly that "the wealth and civi- 
lization of the world are here. "^ Partly by taste, partly 
by policy, the prince favoured whatever conduced to such 
splendour, reviving medieval diversions like the tourna- 
ment at the same time as he favoured Renaissance learn- 
ing and art. 

The spectacular sides of the court were only one side in 
an activity which governed the life of the nation. Henry 
VIII might find his boon companion in Sufiblk, but for his 
counsellors he looked to Wolsey and Cromwell. The court 
thus embraced two distinct elements — the one ornamental, 
the other practical, which separated in their extremes, 
tended to blend together especially in those minor ofiices 
where the need for ability receded before more decorative 
requirements. Both sides converged in the person of the 
prince, and represented the different aspects of his life. 
Both depended entirely on him. As government was 
personal, the degree of favour could daily be gauged by the 
consideration enjoyed close to the throne. 

The crowd of sycophants turned against whoever lost 
the royal favour. The first sign of Cromwell's disgrace was 
when on his way to the Council Chamber no one stooped 
to pick up his hat which the wind had blown off. The 



40 TUDOR IDEALS 

Duke of Norfolk jested at the trial of his niece Katherine 
Howard, while her own brother acted as if nothing amiss 
had occurred.^ Amid such circumstances the absolute 
power of the prince to dispose of his subjects' lives and 
fortunes conduced to the development of the courtiers' 
talents. The monarch's character became an object of 
intense study, and the ability to please proved the most 
valuable of gifts. The struggle was keen, and certain arts 
of success the practice of which was current have now 
disappeared from esteem if not from life. 

The fickleness of princes and the mutability of their 
sympathies, their periods of suspicion and hatred, of clem- 
ency and severity were carefully studied and royal psychol- 
ogy was as anxiously discussed at Hampton Court as in 
the golden palace at Byzantium. Bacon, as full of shrewd 
observation as devoid of character, remarks that princes, 
because they are at the top of human desire, are best 
interpreted by their nature and private persons by their 
ends. And he advised Essex to treat the queen with obse- 
quiousness, to avoid military fame certain to arouse um- 
brage, and to take up projects which could then be aban- 
doned seemingly in deference to her wishes. He was urged 
to imitate her favourites Hatton and Leicester in his habits, 
apparel and gestures.^ Although himself the most unruly 
of courtiers Essex felt till the last that his entire horizon 
was bounded by the royal pleasure. 

The memory of Empson, and Dudley, of Wolsey, and 
Cromwell, was still too fresh for men not to live in appre- 
hension of the prince's purpose. After Essex's first alter- 
cation with the Queen, it was remarked that princes were 
rarely reconciled to those they had offended. One had to 
guess if a favourite's eclipse, was temporary as with 
Leicester, or permanent, and it took skilful steering to 
know if the wiser course lay in joining the wolves who de- 
voured their victim or in reserving friendship for the fallen. 

The spirit of loyalty, so intense among the people, 
became less fervid as soon as one approached the throne. 



THE COURT 41 

Those brought into close contact with the prince who 
suffered from his whims became more critical than the 
multitude whose loyalty was preserved by distance. An 
independence of judgment little in line with the common- 
places of adulation was often met with at Court. Open 
expressions are rare, but Lord Warwick writing to Leices- 
ter then in temporary disgrace, advised him to distrust 
the Queen's oath. Her friendship was not to be relied on 
while "her malice is great and unquenchable." Nowhere 
was franker speech heard than in the intimacy of cour- 
tiers. A remark made by Essex that the Queen was no less 
crooked in mind than in body, repeated to her, rankled 
the most.^ 

As the ability to please the prince became the avenue 
for preferment, court life was but little conducive to 
elevation of character while the courtier grew inclined to 
become a tool indifferent to whatever did not lead to royal 
favour. Usually without independent standing of his own, 
he was compelled to show pliability and debasement. 
Spenser could write that *'he doth soonest rise that best 
can handle his deceitful arts.^ The supremacy of the 
throne was so absolute, and subservience so entire, that 
self-respect was easily forgotten. The Duke of Suffolk 
after he had abused the king's confidence by marrying his 
sister, owed probably his life and certainly his return to 
favour to the great Cardinal, yet turned treacherously 
against his benefactor in the hour of his disgrace.. Later 
Bacon turned against Essex. In the centre of the nation's 
life and at a heroic moment of its history, the arts of 
success were often at variance with the most elementary 
instincts of decency. 

The royal example of magnificence contributed to such 
lowering of character. The King's display was on a scale 
requiring vast wealth, which in turn was often acquired 
by wholesale spoliation. The sovereign was ready to 
associate his favourites in the spoils, and lawyers and 
courtiers joined in the general scramble for the riches of 



42 TUDOR IDEALS 

their victims. The extravagant scale of life in royal 
surroundings engendered rapacity. More and more money 
became necessary to keep up the train of life. The Duke 
of Buckingham wore a gown wrought of needle-work set 
upon cloth of tissue and furred with sable, valued at 
£1500. The garment of a simple Knight like Sir Nicholas 
Vaux was then valued at £1000. The prevailing spirit of 
greed and the ruthlessness of acquisition disgraced the 
court. Even Surrey's wearing apparel was distributed 
among his enemies after his execution, the Duke of 
Somerset taking the greater part.^ 

Men trafficked almost at court and many nobles were 
engaged in trade. The King himself seems to have lent 
money and taken as a pledge the armour of Charles the 
Bold. Favourites of royalty found fortune in its shadow. 
Wolsey's wealth was proverbial, Cromwell's hardly less. 
A poor lad like Mark Smeaton after a few months in the 
Queen's favour, could buy horses and arms and parade 
liveries such as no lord of rank could excel. ^ Miserly as 
was Elizabeth, those on whom she smiled prospered 
mightily. If her spoliations were less flagrant than those 
of her father, she enriched her favourites by the grant of 
monopolies and one of the first signs of her displeasure 
against Essex, was when she refused to renew his profitable 
farming of sweet wines. ^ A "mere vegetable of the court" 
like Hatton, by respectful flattery and greater brains than 
he was credited with by his contemporaries, secured vast 
riches and the Chancellorship. The chronicle of his 
accumulation may be cited as an instance of the benefits 
of royal favour. In 1582 he obtained the Manor of Parva 
Weldon and other lands; in 1585 the keepership of the 
forest of Rockingham and the Isle of Purbeck; in 1586 the 
site of the Monastery of Brier and several manors; in 1587 
the domain of Naseby, the Manor and rectory of West 
Drayton and Perry Place in Middlessex, part of the lands 
forfeited by Lord Paget being bestowed on him while he 
also shared largely in estates forfeited by rebels in Ireland.^ 



THE COURT 43 

Although careers so successful were the exception yet, 
where the rewards of favour were great, keen rivalry in 
the art of pleasing was naturally found in the court 
atmosphere. Success or failure depended on the acquisi- 
tion of such talents and skilled preparation became neces- 
sary to fit the courtier for his task. 

Surrey has described the more ornamental side of this 
training. One follows his own occupations as a youth at 
Windsor passing his time in riding, dancing, tennis, and 
the chase. If Surrey's own talents did not offer the best 
proof to the contrary, it might be supposed that nothing 
had changed in education since the Middle Ages, and that 
outwardly the courtier type still conformed to the older 
model. Alongside of such practices had grown up another 
idea, which demanded the exercise of greater talents than 
mere proficiency in sports and pastimes. 

In every European country but especially in Italy 
where most Renaissance ideas originated, a higher educa- 
tion was now exacted. An entire literature arose on the 
subject and such works ^° either in the original or else 
translated, found their way into England. For the most 
part they were written in that impersonal spirit of realism 
which marked the Italian mind of the Sixteenth Century. 
The courtier's life, training and endowments, were all dis- 
cussed in the light of the moral, social and intellectual as- 
pects of his duties. With princes as learned as were the 
Tudors, the courtiers followed suit and their education be- 
came matter of the most serious moment. Ascham who 
was no flatterer, praised the scholarship of some of the 
young noblemen at court, while contemporaries dwelt on 
their literary skill and knowledge of languages ancient and 
modern. For poets of such distinction as Surrey and 
Wyatt, Sackville and Sidney, to have graced the court, 
within the reigns of father and daughter, was no slight 
achievement. The attempt to seek distinction in poetry 
was in itself a tribute to letters. Puttenham took 
pains to remind his reader that his work on poetry was 



44 TUDOR IDEALS 

intended for the training of "young gentlemen or idle 
courtiers." 

Toward the latter part of the century, a deliberate 
effort was made to create almost artificially a more con- 
scious courtier type. The absurdities of Euphuism have 
often been held to ridicule, but its significance lay in 
presenting a model of courtliness which depended not on 
birth or talent, but on speech. It aimed to establish a 
circle whose refinement would mark a reaction from the 
grossness of the age, and whose basis for distinction should 
rest on cultivation and the wish to balance mind and body. 
The courtier excelling in arms and letters, was expected to 
do all things well. His accomplishments when as real as 
those which graced a Wyatt, formed the brighter side of a 
life which in most respects was unsatisfactory. Putten- 
ham has drawn the picture of a courtier who while pre- 
tending to be at work despatching crown business was in 
reality idling. ^^ The Huguenot Languet was unimpressed 
by what he saw at the English court, finding its habits 
unmanly and its courtesy affected. ^^ An era since become 
a by-word for manliness, was condemned by its contempo- 
raries for effeminacy.-'^ 

Toward the end of Elizabeth's reign, the importance of 
the court was waning in the national life, although super- 
ficially nothing had changed. The Virgin Queen enjoyed 
her subjects' love and veneration. Her court was as 
brilliant as her father's, her progresses still more magnifi- 
cent. But a new life had begun to open beyond, which 
touched even the surroundings nearest to the queen. Sid- 
ney's career as a courtier presented only the least memor- 
able side of his activities. Yet he dared to speak his mind 
to a sovereign who, more than anyone, resented such 
interference; his letter to dissuade her from marrying the 
son of the "Jezebel of the Age," Catherine de Medici, was 
written with courage as high as he displayed at Zutphen. 
His friend and biographer Fulke Greville could find 
that subjects might preserve independence toward their 



THE COURT 45 

sovereign by "paying humble tribute in manner though 
not in matter," ^^ and Spenser, with Sidney in his mind, 
portrayed the perfect courtier who hating flattery, cared 
only for honour and who in his prince's service was always 
ready for arms or civil governance. ^^ 

Even Sidney had on occasion to bend to the royal will 
and obey the queen, when she refused to let him embark 
on his desired voyage around the world. Independence 
was not the courtier's lot, and when a keen soldier like the 
future Lord Mountjoy, left without consent, to fight as a 
volunteer in France, he was ordered back and reviled by 
the queen for his audacity. The glamour of the court 
reflected little of its true life. Utter dependence on a 
capricious sovereign's whims was only one side of the evil. 
Nowhere was poverty more oppressive for those who 
lacked the skill to profit by its opportunities. Sidney when 
overwhelmed by money difficulties, wrote to Hatton, that 
he must forget how to blush and begged his aid to obtain 
the queen's signature for some grant which might help 
him out of trouble. ^^ 

To most men, the court spelled misery and disappoint- 
ment. A few independent spirits like More preferred the 
privacy of their homes and wrote feelingly of the " bondage 
unto kings." His traveller from Utopia spurning wealth 
and position chose his personal liberty. Those who 
knew its pitfalls could like Sir Amyas Poulet write to 
congratulate a friend on being called "from the dangerous 
and uncertain estate of Princes' courts to live in the 
country. ^'^ But more often even those most alive to its 
dangers remained fascinated by the glamour. Roger 
Ascham could write feelingly about its slipperiness, but 
continued in the royal service until he died in poverty. 

The poetic tradition ^^ of satire against court life revived 
from Alexandrian example was in part conventional, in 
part caused by disappointment. The opposite and con- 
flicting desire for privacy and worldliness existed much as 
to-day — though the goal of such ambition was then only to 



46 TUDOR IDEALS 

be found around the prince's person. The distaste was 
often strong yet not so strong as the attraction for who- 
ever sought the brilliancy of life. Spenser who had in vain 
attempted to succeed at court, could say with injured 
sensitiveness, "What hell it is in suing long to bide."^^ 
Lyly wrote, for once with the accent of truth, that the 
court shone for those not there but singed its dwellers, and 
Spenser was only the most gifted of the many singed. 



VI. THE TRAINING FOR AUTHORITY 

Philip de Comines who was widely read in England, 
urged princes to read history as the best way to acquire 
wisdom, basing his argument on the ground that they 
were surrounded by flatterers and the span of life was 
insufficient for experience. Lack of education was never 
a Tudor failing, and no princes were ever more carefully 
prepared for the practice of authority. 

The founder of the dynasty not being born to the purple, 
was in himself hardly a test of what might be expected 
from a prince of the Renaissance. His native qualities of 
statesmanship more than outweighed any deficiencies 
in early education. Yet judged even by narrow standards, 
he was not wanting in letters, for his French reading was 
extensive and he possessed enough familiarity with the 
ancient tongue to correspond in Latin with Cardinal 
Adrian di Castello. Bacon described him as studious 
rather than learned. Knowing his own shortcomings, 
and alive to the fact that the new power of the prince 
found its theoretical justification in classical example, he 
became all the more careful in his children's instruction. 

The royal family overtopped the nobles in knowledge 
as much as in authority. Henry VIII's scholarly attain- 
ments are too well known to require comment. His 
Latin was good enough to astonish Erasmus who wrongly 
suspected that he had been assisted in his correspond- 
ence.^ His interest in theology was considerable if unfor- 
tunate. He was familiar with several modern tongues, had 
a smattering of various subjects and possessed a real 
knowledge of music. During the early years of his reign, 
study took up no mean part of his time and contributed 
to the impression created abroad, that his personality 
was negligible. But the Tudor love of authority allowed 

47 



48 TUDOR IDEALS 

no one long to usurp royal prerogatives, and their faults 
never proceeded from ignorance. The day was over for 
a prince to be as unlettered as Henry VI whose stupidity 
passed for holiness. On the Scottish throne, James IV 
enjoyed fame for his knowledge of six languages besides 
that of "the savages who live in some parts of Scotland. " 

The prince of the Renaissance felt inclined to scholar- 
ship from taste and policy, and the children of royalty 
were almost oppressively instructed. At eight years 
of age, Henry VIIFs illegitimate son, the Duke of Rich- 
mond, was able to translate and construe any passage 
of Caesar. His tutor, George Cotton, with more sense 
than the pedagogue Croke, tried to mitigate the rigour 
of such studies by withdrawing the boy to out-of-door 
amusements. In their wish to fit Edward VI for aflfairs 
of state his teachers propounded such questions of pol- 
icy to the boy as the comparative merits of democracy 
and aristocracy.^ The young prince received the full 
classical training of his age and foreign ambassadors 
could only marvel at his skill in Latin. ^ 

The education of the two princesses was as thorough. 
Mary's solid instruction has been undeservedly passed in 
silence while Elizabeth's has too often been praised. It is 
superfluous to repeat Ascham's stale ancedote of her love 
for the classics — 

"her sweet tongue could speak distinctively Greek, Latin, 
Tuscan, Spanish, French and Dutch." 

" Mirror for Magistrates," III, 918. 

Both English and French poets like Ronsard, d' Aubigne 
and Du Bartas with monotonous eulogy, extolled her love 
of letters, while Bacon, writing after her death, when the 
courtier's art had ceased, remarked that to the last year 
of her life she was accustomed to appoint set hours for 
her study. 

Beyond the influence exercised by their own per- 
sonality, the ideas of the age emphasized the part played 



THE TRAINING FOR AUTHORITY 49 

by princes in the commonwealth. Educators and politi- 
cal thinkers discussed their training, and the sphere of 
their activities in the state. Such theories even when 
not consciously studied by those on the throne, illustrate 
the ideal then entertained of royal duties. The prince's 
example was upheld as a pattern to his people and the 
power of royalty to do good became a lasting monument 
of fame. The throne was to radiate encouragement to 
learning and virtue. Treatises written to expound such 
views ^ laid a theoretical basis to the obligations of power. 
Thomas More dwelt on the duties of royalty ^ and Lati- 
mer declared with Puritan fervour that no one had 
greater labour than a prince.^ 

Left to itself the English mind tends to reduce ideas 
to their practical expression. The Continental vision 
is more abstract. Out of Italy, France and Spain, came 
theories of royal duties derived mainly from classical 
sources where moralists extolled the princes' power for 
good. The noblest of Roman Emperors served as a model 
whosepreceptsof virtue were intended to inspire contem- 
porary rulers.'^ This expedient was popular, but there is 
no record of its practical effect. Save with a realist like 
Macchiavelli, the writers of the Renaissance took keen de- 
light in theorizing even when they saw the wide breach 
between practice and ideas. A moral effigy taking little 
account of life became shaped into an ideal ethical image. 
It was the accompaniment in theory to the exaltation of 
the royal power. 

Not the least ability of the Tudors lay in the talent 
they displayed in surrounding themselves with compe- 
tent advisors. The method for selecting these so far as 
it was not accidental, remains largely obscure. The 
phenomenal rise of men like Wolsey and Cromwell is as 
ill-accounted for, by any ordinary gradation of service, 
beyond the ability to please the prince, as is their sud- 
den fall. Where the avenues of approach were still unde- 
termined transitions became abrupt. The public services 



50 TUDOR IDEALS 

were very irregular; except with municipal life, the ele- 
ments of the modern state remained rudimentary through- 
out the Middle Ages. Until the end of the Fifteenth Cen- 
tury the higher officials had been mainly selected from 
the clergy, for few laymen possessed the necessary educa- 
tion. The Sixteenth Century was to be the bridge which 
spanned the medieval with the modern world. The sec- 
ularization of the state was among its most important 
achievements. 

In a transition period like the Renaissance which pre- 
sents phases of decay alongside of others of growth, a fresh 
structure had to be built, less by the establishment of 
new services than by the modification and expansion of 
those existing. The force which brought this about did 
not deliberately set out to create a class of civil servants, 
but utilizing the material at hand, took those it found 
within reach, whose training bore the usual classical stamp 
of the age. Men in public life, then as now, were occa- 
sionally graced with adornments of cultivation. Yet there 
is a disposition to exaggerate the importance of such ele- 
ments which formed part of their instruction. The real 
qualities which made for the highest success, hardly dif- 
fered from those of any other era except that for the first 
time in England their bearers stand out in the full light of 
a personality where one can discern the beginnings of 
modern man. 

The victory of Renaissance culture however, became 
easier when a variety of reasons made its mastery useful to 
success in life. The expansion of the state then in proc- 
ess, looked to the ancient world for its models, and found 
its best servants in those most familiar with its records. 
Education bears a direct relation to life and the old schol- 
asticism had been signally deficient as a preparation for 
this. Something more modern was required and found in 
the revelation of antiquity. The rise of the new class of 
officials was hastened by the diffusion of education among 
laymen who, aloof from church and feudal connections. 



THE TRAINING FOR AUTHORITY 51 

were solely devoted to the task of administration in the 
crown service. 

The movement toward secularization was gradual and 
probably in its beginning unconscious. It was attended 
by curious circumstances. So long as churchmen had been 
employed in the state, the ecclesiastical hierarchy which 
gave them their position was conducive to its members 
occupying without anomaly high civil posts. Once lay- 
men were substituted for clerics, the lack of fixed tradition 
brought about, as is often the case in new countries, the 
most incongruous choices. John Stile the English envoy 
at the Spanish court in the early years of the century was 
probably only a scribe and certainly without rank or ed- 
ucation.^ An Italian merchant named Spinelli represented 
England in Flanders. Nor were conditions in other 
countries very different. Puebla, the Spanish representa- 
tive at the court of Henry VII, lived in the house of a 
mason who harbored loose women and dined daily in 
their company.^ 

Such anomalies adjusted themselves and the increased 
importance of international relations soon brought about 
its own remedy. Though learning aroused the derision of 
the unlettered it was prized in high quarters. Sir Thomas 
Elyot probably owed his position as ambassador to his 
fame as a writer. Henry VIII had sincere respect for let- 
ters and among his envoys Sir Thomas Wyatt deserves to 
rank with Navagero, Garcilaso della Vega, and the other 
poet diplomatists of the Renaissance. Before the modern 
organization of a diplomatic hierarchy had been created, 
and at a time when men of education still were rare, those 
in whom such qualities stood out, received more readily 
preferment from the Crown. To this degree the somewhat 
irregular conditions prevailing in the administration 
proved favourable to letters. 

With the principles of statecraft which guided the 
Tudors, advancement became easier to men of instruction. 
A French ambassador paying tribute to the excellence 



52 TUDOR IDEALS 

of British diplomacy wrote that there was never a rumour 
in any quarter of the world which they were not the 
first to hear.^° Alluding perhaps to Cromwell's extensive 
use of spies he mentioned the agents whose duty it 
was to transmit news about the designs of princes. The 
reports of the Venetian Ambassadors are deservedly fa- 
mous but many of those written by English envoys were 
no whit inferior. 

Later, Queen Elizabeth, conservative when circum- 
stances permitted, chose decorative incumbents for cere- 
monial occasions but men of ability for the important 
missions, whom she surrounded with staffs of legal and 
commercial specialists as well as secretaries of likely dispo- 
sition to be trained in diplomatic business. ^^ 

The upheaval which marked the end of the Middle 
Ages was attended by a growing freedom in the choice 
of those living in the surroundings of the prince. Dif- 
ferent causes often produce unexpected effects and the 
conditions created by the crown instead of solely facili- 
tating the task of centralized government also favoured 
the growth of the middle classes. Already Perkin Warbeck 
had denounced the "Caitiffs and villains of simple birth" 
around the first Tudor. Henry VII, like Louis XI whom 
he copied, employed men of the humblest origin for the 
highest offices doubtless finding these better educated 
and more pliable. Motives of policy made him reluctant 
to select those of exalted birth. 

Henry VIII acted similarly though such choices were 
often bitterly resented. The disparagement of Wolsey 
was based on his small origin. William Roy wrote, 

"Och there is neither duke nor baron 
Be they never of so great power 
But they are entertained to crouch 
Before this butcherly flouch."^^ 

The Pilgrimage of Grace with Cromwell in mind de- 
manded that villain blood be removed from the Privy 



THE TRAINING FOR AUTHORITY 53 

Council. The Duke of Buckingham complained that 
the king was ready to give fees, office and rewards to 
boys rather than to noblemen, and Surrey at his trial 
declared it to be the royal intention to get rid of all 
those of ancient lineage. 

With the decay of feudalism and the diffusion of 
education, the barriers between the classes had to a 
certain extent been let down. The new learning was 
open to all though it was not to be the men of ancient 
lineage who were most to benefit by it. An established 
position is rarely conducive to favouring the initial 
energy necessary to profit from novel conditions. This 
was one of the ohief reasons which encouraged the influx 
of the "novi homines," who found their path made 
easier because so few others possessed the necessary 
attainments. Already Henry VIFs much hated minister 
Dudley had urged the nobility to pay more attention 
to the education of their sons. In his opinion these 
were the worst brought up of any nation, with the re- 
sult that "the children of poor men and mean folks 
are promoted to the promotion and authority that the 
children of noble blood should have if they were meet 
therefor. "^^ A knowledge of hawking, hunting and 
heraldry had too long been regarded as the sole essen- 
tials in a gentleman's education. So late as the reign of 
Henry VIII, a peer of the realm could say that it was 
enough for a nobleman's sons to wind their horn and 
carry their hawk and leave study and learning to the 
children of mean men. To whom Richard Pace replied in 
famous words that it was due to such ideas that mean men's 
sons managed affairs of state. Latimer deplored the 
absence of education on the part of the upper classes 
which left them unprepared to fill high offices. ^^ Many 
then remarked that the nobles had only themselves to 
blame if men of humble origin brought up in a more rigid 
discipline succeeded better in after life. 

A real improvement in the education of the upper classes 



54 TUDOR IDEALS 

was, however, taking place and from the middle of the 
century, a more serious effort was made to train these for 
the service of the state. The education of the castle, almost 
the last survival of the old chivalry, was giving way to a 
new idea, grounded in the University and enlarged by 
foreign travel. State service furnished the goal in view and 
youth was to be prepared to act as the prince's counsellor, 
to be wise and eloquent of speech and learned in tongues 
and travel. ^^ For the first time learning had become a 
primary condition to advancement. A contemporary 
opinion of what a gentleman's bringing up should consist 
of is contained in the elder Sidney's advice to his son to 
study assiduously, be careful of his tongue, to exercise his 
body, to drink seldom yet enough not to betray effects. ^^ 
The younger Sidney in a famous letter to his brother ex- 
pressed a more developed ideal. He advised him to cul- 
tivate a good colloquial knowledge of Latin. He was to 
study mathematics and history, practice oratory and 
poetry "for ornament" and music for personal solace. 
Lastly he was to cultivate horsemanship and "daily for an 
hour or two, sword and dagger." 

Halfway between the learning of the scholar, and the 
practice in sport and arms of the knight, was the new 
Renaissance idea of a gentleman's education. Borrowed 
largely from Italian and French writers though also from 
Spanish and even Polish ^"^ a body of opinion grew up for 
the training of those who aimed to fit themselves to be of 
service to their country. They were advised to study laws 
and treaties, civil policy and moral science. So far as 
books could supplement deficiencies, theoretical sugges- 
tions were plentiful. Bacon attributed the lack of good 
counsellors as being due to the absence of a suitable 
collegiate education where those who so desired, could fit 
themselves by a study of history, modern languages and 
government to enter the state service. 

Bacon was over inclined to seek academic remedies for 
the deficiencies he saw around him. With the growing 



THE TRAINING FOR AUTHORITY 55 

tendency to find honour in state employment, the means 
of preparation were inadequate. Learned books could 
expatiate on the qualities needed but were less suggestive 
as to how such talents could be acquired. For the rich, 
travel became the approved method, and even those of 
small means like Sidney went from country to country in 
search of experience. The system was at best haphazard. 
It was often remedied by native talent but was not always 
conducive to bringing the best to the fore while it could 
not establish even a modern standard of mediocrity. 

In the struggle for advancement other methods were 
resorted to. With the shrewd observation of experience 
Lord Burleigh advised his son in the search for success, to 
attach his fortune to those of some great man as a friend 
and even to give him some "great gratuity otherwise in 
this ambitious age thou shall remain like a hop without 
a pole line in obscurity." 

Bacon in the apology of his conduct toward Essex, 
freely admitted that he had begun his career by attaching 
himself to his fortunes and accepted from Essex the grant 
of a piece of land which he later sold. He related that 
he had reminded Essex of the example of Guise who had 
been called the greatest usurer in France because having 
turned all his estate into obligations he had left nothing 
for himself while binding numbers of persons to him.^^ 
Between a discarded feudalism and an immature party 
idea, theie grew up an intermediate form of personal 
organization centring round men of prominence. Leicester 
possessed such a following as did Essex. In the atmos- 
phere of the Court a semi-political feudalism arose which 
was not without at times giving umbrage to the crown. 



VII. OFFICE AND CORRUPTION 

Little is known of the first Tudor ministers beyond the 
fact of their unpopularity. Save for a few churchmen, 
they were men mostly of small origin without other posi- 
tion than came to them as dependents of the crown. In. 
spite of the dislike they encountered, no such scandal 
disgraces them as had allowed the receipts of Edward IV's 
chief officials to be displayed in the auditing bureaus of 
Paris.^ The administrative talent of the crown went to 
create a more efficient machinery of office than had before 
been known in England. In the national renovation then 
proceeding, an entire structure was built up. The royal 
policy in the assertion of its new powers aimed to provide a 
directing force able to harness the different elements of 
national strength and bring compactness to what had so 
long been loose jointed. New communities possess their 
own standards and in many respects England was a new 
community. As in all young countries where rapidly 
evolving conditions produce vast changes, the absence of 
an established order caused most men to seek primarily 
their own selfish benefit without being held in leash by 
the discipline of a tradition handed down with its accumu- 
lated prestige. 

The remarkable transformation of the public services 
which then took place followed, in a sense, the evolution of 
royalty itself. The first Tudor's ministers imitating their 
master remained as inconspicuous as circumstances per- 
mitted. Public office still presented grave danger and few 
emoluments with little halo falling' on its incumbents. 
Except for those whose duties brought them into contact 
with the prince, it was regarded more as a burden than 
otherwise and few there were bold enough to seek its 
precarious distinction without ulterior purpose. Sir 

s6 



OFFICE AND CORRUPTION 57 

Thomas More's reluctance to accept office is well known 
and there was hardly an ambassador who did not beg to 
be recalled. The government services were still in too 
chaotic a condition to make them desirable. There ex- 
isted few traditions of integrity or even of devotion to 
duty. When Wolsey almost alone remained at his post 
during the alarm caused by the sweating sickness, the fact 
was regarded 'as noteworthy. Not till much later was 
resignation of office known. Like in Eastern lands, to 
fall was to be disgraced, for it meant the loss of the prince's 
favour and often of life as well. Impeachment was certain 
to follow dismissal. Wolsey deprived of office signed an 
indenture acknowledging his offences and praying the 
king as partial atonement to take over all his temporal 
possessions.^ When Paget, who had opposed Mary's 
Spanish marriage, realized that it would take place, he 
asked for leave of absence but desisted when he saw that 
to persevere in this course exposed him to the risk of losing 
life, honor, and property. 

Under the theory of the crown then prevailing, there 
was no room for anyone entertaining different opinions. 
To acknowledge these was the brand of the traitor and the 
penalties which ensued were only the legal punishments 
for the offence. Not until Elizabeth's stable rule, mod- 
ern conditions began to be approximated which relieved 
officers of the crown from such feelings of personal danger. 
Burleigh asked consent to resign, as a protest against the 
queen's continued displeasure toward Leicester for his 
policy in the Low Countries,^ and it was only after this 
threat, that he found her more amenable to reason. 

Where government was personal the glamour of royalty 
extended over its favourites. The shadow of princely power 
devolved on whoever reigned in his name. Wolsey's 
arrogance was proverbial in the heyday of his favour. 
Foreign envoys remained amazed at his speaking in the 
first person of what England would do, and at the sight 
of great peers like the Dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham, 



58 TUDOR IDEALS 

performing menial services for him when he sat down to 
dinner with the royal party.^ 

With less magnificent tastes than the Cardinal, Thomas 
Cromwell was hardly less insolent in power. In a well- 
known passage of his "Survey" Stow relates how Cromwell 
wishing to enlarge the garden of a new house he had built 
in Throgmorton Street, merely ordered the surveyors to 
take a piece of land from his father's garden as well as from 
others and whoever had the temerity to resist lost his case. 
"This much of mine own knowledge have I thought good 
to note that the sudden rising of some men causeth them 
to forget themselves."^ 

One cannot regard corruption as incidental to any 
system or age, but it would seem as if increased oppor- 
tunities meant an increase of evil. The enlarged horizon 
of the Sixteenth Century was not productive to improve- 
ment in official honesty. Francis I of France expressed the 
prevalent opinion, when answering an appeal made to 
refrain from bribery, that the only means to attain an 
object was by force or corruption. New avenues were 
travelled in the old way and the generous ideals entertained 
by visionaries were replaced by hard facts. Wolsey could 
receive pensions and gifts and himself confer bribes with- 
out finding it amiss. The system was well-nigh universal 
which made the English ambassadors at the Emperor's 
court suggest the use of money to influence his council. 
Even Thomas More is said to have been in receipt of a 
pension from the King of France.^ The noblest mind of the 
age praised the Utopian practice of bribing enemies in 
preference to making war, while Utopian diplomacy dis- 
covered a practical use for gold in corruption. 
^ The judiciary was often a servile bureaucracy where 
any high standard of integrity was the exception and a 
chancellor like Lord Rich, perjured himself in order to 
meet the royal wishes. Standards of professional honour 
were unformed. Doubtless the transformation of Eng- 
land, brought an intense strain on the courts. Novel 



OFFICE AND CORRUPTION 59 

circumstances and the lack of any established standard 
caused far greater laxity of conduct. The gradual amel- 
ioration which took place proves how every age contains 
the seeds of its own betterment, and as it gains stability 
sheds its more disreputable practices. Even then some 
kept honest. Roper found it worthy of note that his 
father-in-law More should have purchased the little land 
he possessed before he became Lord Chancellor; and when 
a litigant in his court sent him a gold cup as a New Year's 
gift he accepted this but returned one of greater value.^ 
Yet bribery in the law was notorious and shocked the 
French Ambassador Marillac who remarked that Sir 
Thomas Audely, then appointed Chancellor, enjoyed the 
reputation of being a good seller of justice.^ 

To traverse the different branches of activity is to find in 
each the same stain.^ A "scandalous venality" existed in 
many offices. An Archbishop could divert money set 
aside for educational purposes to enrich himself. ^° A Lord 
High Admiral could connive at piracy." When Philip's 
marriage arrangements with Mary were being made, one 
of the most important points discussed was the bribery of 
members of the English royal council and Egmont wrote 
to his master that more could be done with money in 
England than anywhere else in the world. Later Leicester 
was accused of taking commissions on all public business 
which passed through his hands,^^ and officers of the 
queen's council were bribed to connive at jobbery in the 
customs. 

Yet Hatton, in spite of pressure brought to bear on him, 
acted as Chancellor in an honourable way, and suspended 
his own Secretary, Samuel Cox, for taking bribes to obtain 
his master's influence with the queen. Sir Henry Sidney 
was among the few absolutely incorruptible officials. 
Cecil too was far more honest than the rest and such 
suspicions as existed about him^^ were without foundation. 
When royalty took bribes, it is significant that Mary 
Stuart could be praised for not selling to the highest bidder 



6o TUDOR IDEALS 

the great offices of state. ^^ Elizabeth was less scrupulous. 
Sir John Harrington desirous to obtain back land forfeited 
by an ancestor, offered the queen five hundred pounds and 
a pretty jewel, ^^ while Leicester in disgrace was advised by 
his friends at court to send her a valuable gift.^^ 

The difference in the degree of corruption in different 
ages, is less one of human nature than of the effect of dis- 
cipline. The evolution of Tudor England toward modern- 
ity was too rapid to shape and coordinate governmental 
machinery in all its points of contact with the opportuni- 
ties for wealth. Where the reserve of inherited riches was 
still in its infancy, where salaries were inadequate, and the 
demand for display excessive, it is not surprising that in a 
crude and newly developed administration, without se- 
curity of tenure or pride of tradition, many officials should 
have succumbed to the temptation of a practice still un- 
regulated, in order to advance their personal interests. 
Camden alludes regretfully to the frequent squandering 
of public funds by those who preferred their private to the 
public good.^^ This was only to be expected, nor was the 
line of demarcation between honest and corrupt usage so 
sharp as it may seem to-day. In Scotland for instance, in 
the Sixteenth Century the receipt of pensions from the 
British Court was so general a practice, that deductions of 
dishonesty would be unfair. ^^ Rigorous conclusions are 
hard to draw. The fortune of Gresham acquired by what 
now seems usury, and the retention of illicit benefits 
through exchange was regarded as perfectly legitimate by 
those around him. It required an age of greater stability 
but less enterprise, to establish a more exacting code. 

The explanation of corruption may best be found in 
the rapid extension of life. Constructive forces were in con- 
tact with a disintegrating structure and the relations be- 
tween the two were to shape conditions with regard to 
which no body of opinion had yet been formed. Men 
had a vague idea that much was wrong, without being 
able amid the moral chaos which prevailed, to define 



OFFICE AND CORRUPTION 6i 

their impressions. The range of the crown's activity had 
so far exceeded any ordinary sphere of control, that a 
void grew up where the practices of official life outstripped 
the primitive standards previously known. Instinctively 
those who could, tried to turn such new situations to their 
advantage. In the long run they did so to the benefit of 
the community though often with a brutal selfishness. 
The most glaring instance of corruption, through the 
spoliation of Church property, put an end less to monas- 
tic abuses many of which had been wantonly exaggerated, 
than it broke up the stagnant pools of conservatism, whose 
vast wealth lay intrenched throughout the land. The 
success of the great reforms of the age would have been 
more precarious if the king had not enlisted in his meas- 
ures the greed of the most energetic elements in the 
nation, hungry for wealth and little mindful of its source. 
How little can be judged by such a scandalous instance 
as the Duke of Buckingham's condemnation when the 
Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk who had been among the 
judges that sentenced him, shared in the distribution of 
his vast estates. ^^ 

In the reshuffling of classes and conditions which then 
took place, it was natural that the more forceful elements 
should come to the front. The freedom of restraint and 
the laxity of standards, provided the conditions favour- 
ing their assertion. So far as permanent consequences 
ensued, the corruption attending the governmental services 
was only a petty aspect in the far wider scope open to those 
who dared to achieve success irrespective of means. It 
was the shadow cast on the action of masterful characters. 

The unscrupulousness of the age, contributed to the suc- 
cessful assertion of those whose energies would with diffi- 
culty have been restrained within conventional limitations. 
To this extent, corruption in a period of rapid expansion 
has not the same degrading influence it exercises in more 
stationary times. Instead of acting as a permanent stigma, 
it marks the evil accompanying an excess of individual 



62 TUDOR IDEALS 

opportunity running ahead of a collective interest still un- 
able to assert itself. Even in that age, glimpses of higher 
perceptions appear; amid the conditions favouring selfish 
greed a finer spirit like Wyatt could write with disgust: 
"I cannot wrest the law to fill the cofi^er with innocent 
blood to feed myself fat."^° 

From time to time shone brighter lights. When in one 
of his sermons Latimer expressed the modern idea of the 
state paying liberal salaries to the right men and boldly 
denounced before the king the sale of public offices, several 
officials restored their defalcations and he was able to re- 
turn nearly four hundred pounds to the crown on condition 
of keeping secret the names of the penitents. ^^ There 
are other instances of a growing delicacy of feeling in such 
matters. Philip Sidney declined to allow his own needs 
to be relieved at the expense of others in the proposed for- 
feiture of catholic estates. ^^ Amid the new conditions of 
stability a finer spirit of integrity arose and when after 
his voyage around the world Drake offered some of his 
booty to men of prominence at court, certain of these 
refused on the ground of it having been obtained by 
piracy.^' 



VIII. POLITICAL MORALITY 

History offers no more delicate problem than to pass 
judgment on a nation's morals. Few periods have 
prated more about ethical considerations in public af- 
fairs, or acted less on them than the Sixteenth Century. 
In that meeting-ground of opposite tendencies, the sud- 
denness of new conditions rising from amid the old, 
and the unexpectedness of its problems, created a series 
of questions which those in authority were often ill- 
prepared to cope with. The result became visible in 
intense reactions which at times followed periods of lib- 
eral tolerance. As soon as moderation no longer seemed 
opportiiiie, each side harked back to traditions of vio- 
lence inherited from earlier days, and applied these as 
instruments of statecraft to the practical conduct of 
affairs. This may help to explain the paradox of an age 
which presents such contradictory sides of cultivation 
and savagery. The problems which arose were novel, 
thrust on the attention of those in authority by unfore- 
seen circumstances as often as by design. But the at- 
tempts to solve them were the result of a more ancient 
practice which looked to force when applied to the mass, 
and to violence where the individual was concerned. 

The Fifteenth Century in England had been stained 
by deeds as dark as any perpetrated in Italy. The mur- 
der of Henry VI, or of the princes in the Tower, were 
not isolated blood spots but crimes comparable to those 
of a Malatesta, or a Borgia. Even Louis XI, hardened 
in his methods, was so shocked by the latter that he re- 
fused to reply to Richard Ill's letter soliciting his friend- 
ship much to the disappointment of a prince who had 
hoped to receive from the French king the same pension 
as his predecessor.^ The motive for political crime is 

63 



64 TUDOR IDEALS 

usually to obtain greater security for the prince. So 
long as national strength or opinion had not yet been 
aroused, the instruments of statecraft were personal 
and rulers were obliged to rely on their skill or unscru- 
pulousness, in the conduct of affairs, rather than on 
the prestige of an administration or the discipline of 
a people. The goa.! of action was their own safety 
on the throne and the extension of_ their . power, but 
the means by which this was achieved came through 
intrigue and violence, rather than' from straightfor- 
ward policy. It was hardly affected by any force of 
public opinion which was still rudimentary and inartic- 
ulate. Where the goals of statecraft were rapidly shap- 
ing themselves toward directions which have lasted to our 
own day, the methods of statesmanship were the same 
as have always existed in all personal government. 

No Italian despot exceeded Henry VII in political 
shrewdness, and like most Italians his cruelty was never 
exercised gratuitously. Murder and clemency alternately 
served the purpose of his statecraft, but unlike his son 
he did not resort unnecessarily to the scaffold and reserved 
his victims for real or supposed necessity. Examples of 
his cunning were alleged in his encouraging the rumour that 
the Duke of York was alive to make it appear that he 
did not reign in his wife's right, or in having his spies 
accused openly as his enemies at St. Paul's to divert sus- 
picion from them. His methods were personal and his 
political morality was that of the age, treacherous and 
ruthless on occasion though never needlessly abusive of 
force. 

To those who seek to understand the spirit of that time, 
few things are more confusing than the seeming respect 
given to legal form with the gross breaches of justice. 
The most amazing contradictions stand out side by 
side. In order to give legal sanction to his attainders for 
treason Henry VIFs reign was supposed to have begun on 
August 2ist, 1485, so that all who had borne arms against 



POLITICAL MORALITY 65 

him at Bosworth offended against the King's Majesty 
and as such were guilty of high treason. Yet when 
Perkin Warbeck failed in his attempt to seize the crown, 
the defence advanced was, that as a foreigner, he had not 
been guilty of treason to his lord, and mild captivity 
was reserved for him until later plots made his execu- 
tion necessary. 

Such contradictions came from the successful oppor- 
tunism of Tudor policy. Where the current of an age flows 
swiftly, those adrift of it guide their bark by instinct and 
not by a fixed chart. Henry VII could ruthlessly suppress 
one insurrection and act toward the leaders of another with 
the greatest magnanimity. The lawjnjiisjiands became 
an instrument of policy more than of justice. Like every 
other function of government it had to bendJ.ts_elf.to the 
royaLwill. Even this subservience marked an enormous 
advance. After the anarchy of the Fifteenth Century 
when the intimidation of judges and juries had been com- 
mon occurrences and men appeared in court backed by 
their armed retainers, the new power of the crown by re- 
stricting the law's perversion to a single will, marked an 
undoubted advance. 

In their attitude toward justice as in their attitude 
toward every form of authority the Tudors became the 
■gateway for modern England and made their tyranny a 
step toward future freedom. Tudor policy used the law 
as a practical means of levelling their subjects to equality. 
Obvious as this now seems, its beginnings were difficult 
to enforce. When in 1498 the Earl of Shefiield had killed 
a man he felt his honour insulted because although a peer 
and pardoned by the king for this offence he had been 
indicted before a common court of justice. 

Under Henry VIII the case of Lord Dacres executed for 
a petty poaching fray is notorious. The king insisted on 
his execution although pardoning some of his humbler 
companions. It is among the paradoxes of history that 
the greatest results are often unconsciously prepared. 



66 TUDOR IDEALS 

The policy of the crown which aimed to bring order to 
the different processes of justice handed down from the 
Middle Ages, to subject these to its own control and apply 
them equally to all, irrespective of birth or station, in re- 
ality prepared the way for what would to-day be known 
as a democratic reform which was carried out by the great- 
est tyrant of his time. 

Even by the lights of his century Henry VIII was cruel. 
The levelling tendencies of the age first became apparent 
in the equality of high and low before the executioner's axe. 
The first prince of the Renaissance in England utilized 
without compunction the vast instruments of power in his 
hands. The system of espionage which since the time of 
Edward IV had been known in England, was a current 
accompaniment of Tudor government. When the houses 
of the great sheltered retinues of retainers, spies were 
nearly always to be found among these. The evidence 
for the execution of Lord Exeter was obtained from his 
servants. 

The unscrupulousness of the king's rule was in nothing 
more noticeable than in his readiness to send the mighty, 
like the Duke of Buckingham, to the block for no greater 
crime than their royal descent. This was only one side of 
a political morality which had made him begin his reign 
by unjustly condemning his father's unpopular ministers 
to the scaffold and later beheading the Earl of Suffolk, 
whose life he had pledged himself to spare. 

Underneath such actions, was ingrained the belief in 
himself as above the law and independent of the canons 
of right and wrong. The prince, embodying the state, 
could do as he liked and his first duty was to safeguard 
his own security and authority by every means in his 
power. The propriety of his actions never disturbed a 
monarch who saw no relation between his own practice 
and the duty owed his subjects. 

Medieval violence merely changed its form. Instead of 
being vengeance wreaked by private means, the king made 



POLITICAL MORALITY G'j 

the strong hand of the state, the instrument of his com- 
mand and in his matrimonial experiences raised personal 
whims to the level of national policies. In this sense, po- 
litical morality acquired a far more sinister meaning than 
ever before. The elevation of royal authority had given 
it a power never previously possessed. The new idea of 
the throne, new forces in the state, and the weakened in- 
fluence of former restraints, brought to the front a theory 
of statecraft which looked only to the means to bring about 
whatever end was desired by the crown. Here and there 
a few scruples lingered. Henry showed a curious respect 
for Katherine of Aragon's life though the suspicion of poi- 
son was not entirely absent from her death. But an affair 
which then touched the King so nearly as his desire for 
riddance of Anne Boleyn, was treated with an absence of 
decency. Under torture and with promise of pardon, a 
confession was wrung from the wretched Mark Smeaton, 
who was subsequently executed to prevent his retracting, 
while the queen expiated on the scaffold the crime of hav- 
ing borne him a daughter. 

Such misdeeds were the reactions of a swollen power un- 
checked by fear of censure, in an age which despite its re- 
finements remained brutal and cruel. Yet it is not easy 
to generalize, for examples of magnanimous moderation 
might be cited almost in the same breatlT." Protector 
Somerset's humanity stood him in ill stead. Few char- 
acters in history have been more harshly treated than 
Mary, but to her credit, she spared the life of her sister, 
Elizabeth, when the latter was implicated in Wyatt's 
rebellion, and refrained from the alternative plan of send- 
ing her out of England to be married to a foreigner. 

Every age offers examples of contrary tendencies, and it 
is unfair to single out only certain ones to the exclusion of 
others. The so-called spirit of a period arises through some 
ideas being brought into sharper relief and not kept down 
by moderating influences. During the Sixteenth Century 
the march of action had outstripped that of criticism. The 



68 TUDOR IDEALS 

exercise of forceful energy was not restrained by stabilizing 
tendencies which make for moderation. The direction 
given to political action placed itself astride of popular 
currents far more than is realized. The network of intrigue 
was the inevitable result of a personal government which 
in the absence of definite party ideas or of an organized 
opinion, utilized religious prejudices for its own purposes or 
invoked spiritual motives alien to its own beliefs. So true 
was this, that even the lukewarm had in their own interest 
to conduct ruthlessly those movements of which they 
assumed the head. One so religiously tolerant as Eliza- 
beth, who was regarded as a freethinker by those who 
knew her best, was yet forced by circumstance to burn 
Catholics at the stake. On the continent the leader of the 
Protestant cause, William of Orange, was thought to be 
an agnostic while the Valois, who perpetrated St. Bar- 
tholomew, were more superstitious than Papist. 

Violence and political immorality passed into the cur- 
rent practice of life from two sides. Those who were them- 
selves deeply stirred by the great forces of the age and 
solely intent on their success, were as careless in their 
choice of method as men have always been in all great 
periods. Others who were personally indifferent, took their 
cue from the atmosphere around them and selected instru- 
ments of action solely from the point of view of expediency. 
Every age transmits to the next the shell of its own form 
more often than the substance. While the pious jargon 
handed down from the Middle Ages to envelope declara- 
tions of action was still preserved, new meanings were 
read into this. With fine irony, Thomas More describing 
the various sanctimonious guises intended to secure 
greater stability for political alliances, remarked that loop- 
holes could always be found. Such phraseology was 
partly a convention, partly a blind to disguise the real 
ruthlessness of policy. Morality could be utilized either 
to conceal policies or to confound enemies. 

Nothing was more conscientious than Elizabeth's public 



POLITICAL MORALITY 69 

utterances. When she rebuked Leicester for accepting 
the proffered sovereign powers over the Netherlands, the 
nominal ground was because, to have acquiesced therein 
after protesting the contrary, would have made her 
" infamous to all princes."^ Theoretically, moral consid- 
erations were of supreme importance, and writers came 
forward, in defence of lofty ideals. The Frenchman, La 
Primaudaye, well known in England, declared that the 
prince's faith must be kept inviolate as no crime was 
worse than perjury,^ The French ambassador, Cognet, 
upheld plain dealing and the highest standard of veracity, 
reproving the Italians who defended villainy in the name 
of prudence.^ The maligned Italians were no worse than 
others, though the qualities which made them shine at 
every court were rarely those of character. 

Peele could declare ' If kings do dally with holy oaths, 
the heavens will right the wrongs that they sustain.' ^ But 
such expressions were confined to literature. Rhetorical 
tradition and classical and religious inheritance prated 
about abstract virtue doubtless in good faith and inten- 
tion. As a positive factor in action, morality was well-nigh 
negligible. Its main importance came as a sop to a yet 
unformed public opinion, and Bacon could quote approv- 
ingly Guicciardini's account of the King of Spain, who 
" did always mask and veil his appetites with a demon- 
stration of a devout and holy intention." 

There was little to choose in the ethics of any nation. 
All found it necessary to profess a lofty semblance of vir- 
tue and all resorted to whatever means, fair or foul, seemed 
most likely to conduce to the success of their policy. For- 
gery, torture and assassination were the current methods 
of the age. This discrepancy between the means and the 
ideal was so glaring as to astonish. If the scope for 
good and bad alike had increased it seemed as if only evil 
had been chosen. 

Assassination passed into public morals. Even the 
Utopians in wartime posted offers of reward to whoever 



70 TUDOR IDEALS 

should kill their enemies' prince,^ justifying this because 
by the death of a few offenders the lives of many inno- 
cents on both sides would be preserved. When in "The 
Tempest" Antonio suggests to Sebastian to kill his brother 
in his sleep and reign in his stead the idea was not foreign 
to the imagination of the age. 

England was saved from the worst practices of politi- 
cal murder, because the power of the crown was strong 
enough to enforce its purposes by legal means. But the 
political philosophy of the Renaissance, both Catholic 
and Protestant, taking its example from antiquity, admit- 
ted the legitimacy of assassination. Learning was uti- 
lized to find classical examples of virtuous crime and call 
in the slayers of Grecian tyrants to cast their halo on 
the murderers of the Renaissance.''' Henry VIII ap- 
proved of the plot to murder Cardinal Beaton, and paid 
the ruffians who perpetrated the crime. John Knox 
praised the murder as "a goodly deed," and the poet 
Lyndsay, prompt enough to see evil everywhere, found 
only good therein and likens the assassins to Judith slay- 
ing Holofernes.* Humanists like Buchanan, heads of Col- 
leges like Lawrence Humphrey,^ bishops like Poynet, 
on patriotic grounds expounded the virtues of tyranni- 
cide. 

The belief was then widely prevalent that the Catho- 
lic powers would reward anyone who assassinated Queen 
Elizabeth. She herself often referred to this danger, 
and remarked to one French ambassador that the King 
of Spain had despatched no less than fifteen emissaries 
to kill her who had so confessed. It is certain that Philip 
and Elizabeth each supporting a great cause resorted to 
the most criminal means against each other. To blacken 
her opponents, the queen not impossibly made a victim 
out of Dr. Lopez and may well have had an innocent 
man wronged to further her policy. English govern- 
mental agents like Peter Boles and Thomas Philips forged 
incriminating passages in the letters of their enemies, ^° 



POLITICAL MORALITY 71 

and the incident of the CathoHc John Story, kidnapped 
by the queen's agents in the Low Countries and brought 
to England where he was executed, disposes one to accept 
the truth of many discreditable narratives. In Ireland 
the English administration coined base money ostensibly 
to prevent the rebels from providing for their wants from 
abroad,^^ and the first Lord Essex, imitating Caesar Bor- 
gia, invited the O'Neills to a banquet at Belfast which 
was followed by a general massacre. 

The gulf of hatred separating the different camps in 
Europe acted as an incentive to criminal solutions. Con- 
temporaries found in this no reason for astonishment. 
When Elizabeth was accused of having planned the 
murder of Parma in the Low Countries, she pricked 
the slander on the ground of her not having any personal 
grievance against a chivalrous enemy and because he 
was in no way indispensable to the prosecution of the 
war.^^ But she expressed no indignation at such a 
charge. 

The extension taken by English life in the latter part 
of the Sixteenth Century, tended to accentuate these 
evils. The sharpness of all crises brings to the fore 
an employment of means which corresponds to the 
reality of desire stripped of decorous formulas or re- 
straints. Political immorality less personal than under 
Henry VIII was becoming more national in the sense 
of extending far beyond the court. New horizons were 
being opened toward unfamiliar fields. The widening cir- 
cle projected around England embraced subjects so 
slightly connected as the break with Rome, the revolt 
in Flanders, and the English buccaneers in the West 
Indies, whose point of contact came in their common 
enmity with Spain. The queen occupying a throne 
which in her early years was sustained as much by du- 
plicity as by force, and almost to the end of her reign, 
threatened by grave dangers, responded to these with 
the use of the weapons of her time. It is a test of states- 



72 TUDOR IDEALS 

manship in every age to be in touch with the life around 
it both good and bad and to utilize its force to attain 
the goal in view. False, hypocritical, and ruthless, 
as Elizabeth's practices were, they were those of the age, 
neither better nor worse. 

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew offers a touch- 
stone of sixteenth century statecraft in England as well 
as in France, revolting even to that time. The French 
ambassador Du Ferrier wrote Catherine de Medici of 
how profoundly it had shocked Catholic opinion in 
Europe. In the reign of terror which ensued in France, 
where a canon of Notre Dame like Roulart who had 
protested against it, was murdered in prison, men in fear 
of their lives praised the massacre though "privately, 
few are found that do not utterly detest it. "^^ Some 
explanation was thought necessary in its defence and 
Charles IX sending for Walsingham, told him it was 
due to the danger in which the royal family had suddenly 
found themselves owing to Coligny's alleged conspiracy, 
the proofs of which would shortly be published before 
the world. ^^ The French ambassador in London was 
at the same time instructed to explain the massacre to 
the queen. He did so, professing himself "ashamed to 
be counted a Frenchman" yet seeking to disculpate the 
king who had been distracted by the danger in which he 
found himself. 

Elizabeth could with difficulty have entertained any il- 
lusions as to the crime. From Paris Walsingham wrote in 
disgust that Coligny was never in more apparent favour 
than just before St. Bartholomew and it seemed less dan- 
gerous to live with the Valois as enemies than as friends. ^^ 
" There is here neither regard had to either word, writing 
or edict be it never so solemnly published." He was re- 
volted by the cruelty which planned the later massacres 
in the provinces and the hypocrisy which then protested 
that they were perpetrated against the royal will. Burleigh 
regarded it as the devil's work,^® yet admitted that the 



POLITICAL MORALITY 73 

French ambassador had persuaded the queen that his 
master was in no way responsible, and had even the audac- 
ity to suggest that she should condole with the king for 
" this miserable accident" rather than to condemn him.^^ 

Elizabeth only used the massacre as a further excuse 
against the French marriage. With Charles IX's wish 
to suppress the Protestant faith his brother could not be a 
fit husband. But she neither broke off relations nor con- 
demned the crime but expressed her willingness to accept 
proofs of the conspiracy. Her attitude was one of the most 
callous indifference. The Rouen massacre a month later, 
aroused a seeming explosion of the queen's anger, but she 
professed to believe the official explanation which threw 
the blame on a few misguided partisans, and recommended 
for protection amid these murders, the English wine mer- 
chants at Bordeaux. ^^ 

She even accepted to be godmother of Charles IX's 
daughter and was cynical enough to use the massacres to 
set the greater value on her action, declaring that his per- 
secution against the Huguenots might seem incompatible 
with her friendship, yet the affection she entertained for 
the French king was so great as to cause her to accept his 
offer. Never did political considerations prevail more 
barefacedly. But the conscience of the nation, shocked 
by such murders, was healthier than that of its rulers. St. 
Bartholomew stamped a deep impression on the English 
mind in its horror of Catholic policy. 

Elizabeth's ideas of political morality were again in evi- 
dence amid the circumstances attending the execution of 
Mary, Queen of Scots. It may be true as her apologist 
has said, that any other prince would have done the same,^^ 
though the example of her sister Mary toward herself 
had been far more magnanimous. In a contemporary 
French dialogue, an Englishman defended, the execution 
on the ground that in matters of state it was no evil to 
remove a great evil in order to introduce a great bene- 
fit.2° Whether the charge that Mary had conspired 



74 TUDOR IDEALS 

against Elizabeth's life was true or false, whatever sym- 
pathy a character so gifted, so heroic, and so unfortunate 
inspires, it is certain that the policy of which she was to 
find herself the victim was not dissimilar from her own 
ideas. Irrespective of the question of her association in 
Darnley's murder there can be little doubt that she 
approved of the plan to assassinate the Prince of 
Orange. 

Her execution was due to the practical view of politics 
taken in the Sixteenth Century. As it was impossible for 
Mary Stuart to regard herself otherwise than the rightful 
claimant to the English throne she was a danger to Prot- 
estant England. The necessity for her execution had 
been impressed on Elizabeth by her closest advisers, ^^ 
whether rightfully or wrongly, is here not the question. 
In ordering it Elizabeth showed herself more reprehensi- 
ble by her hypocrisy than by her conduct. In the anony- 
mous "Justification" written as a defence it was said 
that she had never ordered her death but only signed the 
warrant to be kept in case of need. Elizabeth in writ- 
ing to James VI protested her innocence of Mary's blood, 
and her son though hinting at a demand for " satisfac- 
tion " found it convenient to believe her. James was far 
more interested in assuring his own claim to the succession 
than in saving his mother's life,^^ and was probably se- 
cretly relieved by her death. 

More revolting was Elizabeth's hypocrisy in her pun- 
ishment of Secretary Davison whom she made a scapegoat 
to shield herself from Catholic resentment. The latter 
sentenced to imprisonment and the payment of a crush- 
ing fine, entreated vainly to be restored to the queen's 
favour. Though she aided him at times he never again 
recovered the latter and remained an innocent victim of 
her own duplicity. 

Great causes have often been carried to triumphant suc- 
cess by ignoble instruments. The seeds of England's great- 
ness sprang from a soil infested with rank weeds. Truly 



POLITICAL MORALITY 75 

could the essayist Cornwallis write that " against no life 
doth the force of vice oppose herself and make so strong a 
preparation as against the life of a statesman. . . . She 
assaults with the weapons of power, self-love, ambition, 
corruption, revenge, and fear." ^s 



IX. THE IDEA OF THE STATE 

Hardly more than a remote relation exists between the 
ideas of thinkers and the acts of rulers, for the task of 
government is not entrusted to philosophers. The neces- 
sities of policy have always hewn their own course in 
the most practical of schools. In England before the 
Seventeenth Century, political philosophers barely existed, 
for jurists had never been haunted by the same medieval 
reminders of the Roman Empire as on the continent. 
The aspects of power had not much in common with 
the abstract vision of statecraft, and the practice of au- 
thority was guided solely by the requirements of circum- 
stance. 

Little theory stood behind the first Tudor's rule, and 
his professed wish to lead a crusade was hardly more seri- 
ously intended than to associate his policy with what- 
ever was venerable. How real an interest this plan 
excited may be gauged by the collection taken at court 
for warfare against the infidel, which realized eleven 
guineas. Henry VII responded more consciously to the 
example of the French State, where as a refugee he had 
been impressed by the advantages of centralization. 
"He would like to govern England in the French fash- 
ion, but he cannot" wrote Ayala, the Spanish ambas- 
sador, to Ferdinand of Aragon.^ The Spaniard did not 
discern that by far his greatest innovation was the suc- 
cessful establishment of his own dynasty. 

The purpose of political thought is always to find a 
rational basis for the state. Such ideas were often only 
the dreams of students trained in Roman Law and 
desiring to fashion an image of government which would 
respond to this. In Italy the spirit of the Renaissance 
taught men to reason as well as to act in terms of realism, 

76 



THE IDEA OF THE STATE -j-j 

but in England the medieval intellectual inheritance 
was not so easily thrown off. Even where ideas were 
modern, the form of their expression remained antiquated. 
Dudley's "Tree of Commonwealth," written to curry 
favour with Henry VIII, offers an argument for absolute 
monarchy. One who had shown himself an extreme 
realist in his actions, now prated only of ethical consid- 
erations under the form of medieval allegory. 

Ideas conveyed by letters are usually more signifi- 
cant as expressions of an age than as directly influencing 
those in power. It would be folly to look to any consid- 
erable intellectual preparation for the policy of Henry 
VIII was impressed on him under the aspect of personal 
advantage. Human actions respond more readily to 
instinct than to reason, and the king's acquisitive tastes 
had everything to gain from the novel conception of 
the state. Yet without the ferment of the new ideas 
preparing such condition as the one from which he was 
to derive benefit, he would probably never have dared to 
venture on the course he followed. A prince of negli- 
gible personality might have made English history take a 
different turn. If the precise connection between in- 
dividual character and contemporary ideas can never be 
established, it suggests a closer study of the prevailing 
theories of the state than has usually been given. 

Ever since antiquity, the dream of an ideal state had 
haunted the imagination of thinkers, and it was natural 
for the mind of the Renaissance, steeped in classical cul- 
ture, to concern itself with the same problems. More's 
*' Utopia" is the most famous, as it is the greatest monu- 
ment of the political ideals of that age. But its image of 
the state was too remote from life. More's reasoning, 
based partly on antiquity, partly original, nor yet wholly 
uninfluenced by the Middle Ages, pursued an independent 
course and bore a far looser relation to the age than did 
the Tudor monarchy. The prince in the Utopian mind 
was to be a kind of president, elected by secret ballot for 



78 TUDOR IDEALS 

life, but who could be deposed for tyranny. If he forfeited 
the good will of his subjects, he was to abdicate, for 
though bearing the name of king, "the majesty is lost."^ 

More's friend Erasmus held similar ideas when he ar- 
gued in the "Christian Prince" that if men were perfect, 
absolute monarchy might be desirable but as this was 
unlikely, a limited one became preferable. How More in- 
terpreted his responsible duties was seen when the philos- 
opher made way for the Chancellor, and the broad toler- 
ance he had advocated in his writing was replaced by the 
persecution of heretics. 

The liberalism of the humanists was not in touch with 
an age which had just created the omnipotent state and 
the current was running swiftly toward an even greater 
interference with the individual. Better than in "Utopia," 
the conscious political goal of the throne may be understood 
from a paper written by Edward VI. ^ Those in power 
have rarely leisure or inclination to express their theory of 
the state and the ideas of a boy, however precocious, are 
not easily original. Perhaps because of this they are all 
the more representative of their time. The young king 
had been impressed by essays on statecraft, written for his 
instruction by William Thomas, one of the most cultiva- 
ted men of his day and the one best versed in Italian let- 
ters. The ideal before his mind was that of centralization 
in "one head, one governor, one law." The young prince 
compared the body politic to the human body in which 
every organ has its function. As the arm defends the 
head, so should the gentry with their retainers be ready in 
defence of their country, while merchants and husbandmen 
laboured for its sustenance. The upper classes were to be 
favoured as a state policy though less than in France where 
the peasantry, the king remarked, was of slight value. 
The cherished ideal of governmental paternalism aimed to 
restrain men from amassing undue wealth. No one ele- 
ment was to hurt the other, and everyone was to be kept 
bound to his class and to the work he had been born to. 



THE IDEA OF. THE STATE 79 

The weakness of such theorizing, consists in trying to 
find fixed solutions for rapidly shifting problems. With all 
its keen perceptions, the Sixteenth Century had not been 
trained to discern the continuous evolution of forces within 
the state and the hopelessness of trying to restrain these 
within artificial channels. Edward VI took the medieval 
view of the nation as a pyramid of which the throne was 
the apex. In spite of his declared policy toward the " en- 
gendering of friendship in all parts of the commonwealth" 
the remedies he proposed for the prevailing unrest, in- 
cluded rigid sumptuary laws, while he hurled his wrath 
against those whom he thought were disturbing elements, 
interfering with the established order of things. This the- 
ory of absolute royal supremacy exercised for the welfare 
of the people, best expressed the Tudor ideal of the state. 

Ideas which departed from orthodox standards, found 
few channels for expression, and religious controversies 
were so violent as to distort the intentions of political 
reasoning. There existed a school of thought by no 
means identical with the opinions of those in power, but 
mainly based on the study of antiquity applied to the 
conditions of the state. Aristotle's "Politics" provided 
the fountain head for nearly all political philosophy. 
Its clear analysis of governmental forms, and imper- 
sonal discussion of their relative advantages, became a 
model copied in every country. The first familiarity 
with the ideas of the ancient world proceeded only from 
a spirit of imitation. If one excepts More, other writers 
barely penetrated beyond the commonplaces of thought 
on the subject, and Sir Thomas Elyot's views are far from 
profound when compared with those of contemporary 
Italians. He remained a scholar steeped in classical 
studies but with insufficient insight to do more than 
to imitate his masters. His ideas were commonplace, 
his bias ethical. The conclusions he reached naturally 
favoured monarchy as the form of government most 
conducive to order. 



8o TUDOR IDEALS 

Where political thought concerned itself with actual 
problems, it aimed to analyze in the state the different 
elements of authority. The modern view of Tudor 
absolutism was hardly shared by contemporaries. Poli- 
tical theorists found that, in addition to the monarch- 
ical principle of the crown, it partook of aristocracy 
through the councils, and in so far as "the common- 
alty have their voices and burgesses in Parliament it 
taketh part also of democratic or popular govern- 
ment." ^ 

Certain writers were inclined to look to the aristocracy 
as the bulwarks of the state,^ but the preference of the 
majority went to whatever conduced to augmenting the 
importance of the monarchical principle.^ The crown 
represented order and stability, midway between the 
anarchy of the late feudal nobility and the extravagances 
of an anabaptist democracy. Though the processes of 
reasoning employed to exalt the throne were remote, the 
theory was not unsound. The centralizing tendencies of 
life and the gathering of its activities into larger national 
aggregates, half consciously, half unconsciously swept all 
these under the general control of the crown. A student's 
analysis might still detect different elements in the 
political complexion of power. Its one reality was that 
of the crown and everything else merely contributed to 
magnify this. 

Other ideas were not of immediate consequence. They 
represented little more than seed thrown into furrows, 
and thoughts which, without political importance at 
the time in England, were a century later to become 
commonplaces. For identical reasons Protestants in 
-France and English Catholics advocated restricting the 
power of the prince. They based their contention on 
an implied contract existing between prince and sub- 
jects, and where the former did not derive his rights by 
their consent his rule was "an unlawful and tyrannical 
usurpation."^ 



THE IDEA OF THE STATE 8i 

In a curious dialogue by Thomas Starkey, an English 
Catholic writer, Cardinal Pole declares that the excess of 
royal authority was the worst of evils and argued for the 
rule of Parliament. The ability of a single man to dis- 
pense with the laws was the "gate to all tyranny, " With 
a dig at the Tudor theory, he deprecated the attitude of 
English kings who "have judged all things pertaining to 
our realm to hang only upon their will and fantasy."^ 
He, too, argued in favour of the election of princes, on the 
ground of their heirs being rarely worthy of high authority, 
while the English preference for succession by inheritance 
was attributed to the fact that "we are barbarous."^ 
Starkey's view was that of Catholic liberalism. He had 
lived long in Italy and was impressed by the Venetian ex- 
ample which hedged in the Doge's authority from all sides. 
His own predilections went toward giving power to a coun- 
cil composed of churchmen, laymen, and nobles, selected 
by Parliament and accorded plenary powers. The king 
was to act as president of such council. But, he added, 
every government must be suited to its people, and it 
was not its form but its spirit which made it good or 
bad. When all members of the body politic worked 
together for the public good, the commonwealth must 
flourish. 

Such ideas were not uncommon. The Polish states- 
man Grimaldus Goslicius whose book, "The Counsel- 
lor" was translated into English in 1598, explains that a 
government is the result of the mental inclination and 
training of its subjects and precedes Buckle by noticing 
the influence of climate. He, too, was in favour of a 
mixed form of government, by the king, senate, and popu- 
lar consent, thus blending together "the best, the mean, 
and the base people. " ^° 

Bishop Poynet, who deserves to rank among the 
spiritual ancestors of the Commonwealth, was even 
more violent in advocating means to restrict the power 
of the prince as "Kings and princes be they never so 



82 TUDOR IDEALS 

great are but members, and commonwealths may stand 
well enough and flourish albeit there be no kings." He 
denounced the Spaniards' extermination of the Caribs as 
due to princes taking "all their subjects' things as their 
own. "^^ The prince in his opinion ought to be bound by 
the same moral laws as the private person and should 
obey the laws which he himself has made. If he robs 
his subjects it is theft and should be punished as such. 
If he murders them in violation of the laws, he ought 
to be punished as a murderer. ^^ The obedience he is 
able to exact is only for so long as he can command well 
and wisely, for tyranny ought to be resisted. Radical as 
were such views, he agreed with the Aristotelian maxim 
that that commonwealth was best where only one man 
ruled provided he be good and just. 

Absolute royal supremacy tempered by wisdom, and 
directed toward the welfare of the people, came nearest 
to expressing the Tudor theory of the state. Poynet, like 
Starkey, was too remote from the somewhat uncritical 
body of English opinion which applauded the strong hand 
when it struck impartially, high as well as low. 

In Scotland the prevailing disorder tended to promote 
more subversive views. It had been William Major's 
opinion that as the people first made kings, so the people 
could dethrone them when they misused their privileges. 
A poet like William Lauder •could write that between 
the king and his humblest vassal, no difl^erence existed 
in the sight of God and if a king transgressed virtue 
and oppressed his subjects, he was to be deposed from his 
high place forfeiting crown and sceptre. With the spec- 
tacle of anarchy before his eyes, the humanist Buchanan 
was frankly indifferent to the form of government which 
a people might choose. He believed that the sovereign 
drew his authority from the law, but this emanated from 
the people who retained their power of dealing with a king 
who transgressed it. If the prince should be guilty of any 
crime he was to be judged by the same law as the private 



THE IDEA OF THE STATE 83 

citizen, and if he refused to submit to trial he became a 
public enemy and as such might be slain. ^^ 

The feeling in Lowland Scotland went more easily to ex- 
tremes than under the strong Tudor rule, Even in Eng- 
land ran an undercurrent which tried to curb the powers 
of the crown, and the ancestry of Commonwealth ideas 
can be traced to the Sixteenth Century. Elizabeth, im- 
perious as was her nature, wisely gave way before the new 
trend of popular feeling which was growingly impatient 
with the swollen powers of the crown. During the debate 
on monopolies in 1601, when, after outlining her concep- 
tion of the royal duties as being answerable to God on 
Judgment Day, she yielded to the Commons and thanked 
them for having saved her from error, remarking that 
the State was to be governed for the benefit of those that 
are committed and not of those to whom it iscommitted.^* 
From her father's idea of England as a royal estate, Eliz- 
abeth had advanced toward the modern view. 



# 



X. PUBLIC OPINION 

The chatter of the market-place was little respectful of 
the mighty in the Middle Ages, but its power was slight, 
and the scope of its opinion was hampered by the clogged 
channels of diffusion. 

Before the Sixteenth Century, English municipal life 
stood in poor comparison with that of the Italian or Flem- 
ish cities. The part played by Parliament was only spas- 
modic. It was exceptional for the middle classes to feel 
concerned with affairs of state. The people, unless touched 
by specially onerous taxation or disturbances of their cus- 
toms, accepted without question the rule of the crown. 
Public opinion, if it existed at all, remained latent and 
inarticulate. Our knowledge of the ideas of classes so ex- 
pressionless becomes positive mainly by its negativeness. 
At the beginning of the Sixteenth Century it was hardly 
existent or else inaudible save within a narrow circle. Yet 
it was destined before many years to become a real force 
actively influencing the decisions of the state and possessed 
of roots burrowing deep into the nation. 

The long anarchy of the Fifteenth Century predisposed 
Englishmen, after the restoration of order, to accept more 
readily obedience to authority. So long as nothing oc- 
curred to disturb the habits of life, government remained 
easy. Below the surface a rudimentary opinion, which 
had been inherited from freer and more turbulent times, 
was quiescent although the Italian traveller who visited 
England in the year 1500 remarked that if the king pro- 
posed to change any old established rule, every English- 
man would think that his life had been endangered 
thereby.^ 

The cautious practice of Henry VII shows that he bore 

8d 



PUBLIC OPINION 85 

in mind the existence of some such reserve of public opin- 
ion which he was careful never to disturb. A prince whose 
prestige was so new, had to be doubly cautious to avoid 
arousing feeling in violation of any accepted tradition. On 
the part of his subjects there was little disposition to force 
the issue. Primarily they wanted order and security, not 
liberty of speech. Moreover, they were apprehensive of 
its consequences. Thomas More, on being elected to the 
speakership, said openly that men were afraid to express 
themselves, and begged the king to encourage his subjects 
to do so.^ But the spirit of Tudor statecraft was never 
in favour of such liberties. 

Examples of criticism of contemporary events can be 
found in Skelton's doggerel verse, and in many passages 
of Kennedy, Lyndsay and Dunbar. Censure in all ages 
has taken a satiric form, but its popular dress proved in- 
sufficient to make more than the narrowest appeal. More 
can be gathered by what was left unsaid in the popular 
narratives of the time. When such annals as the " London 
Chronicle" relate events like the execution of Thomas 
More and Anne Boleyn without comment or relief, when 
the diary of a comfortably situated merchant tailor of 
London, like Henry Machyn, betrays the same stolid indif- 
ference, one draws other deductions. 

The greatest changes in the state and church were to 
such pens only occurrences without further significance. 
They remained either silent or more likely apathetic, 
finding their real interest in pageants and festivals. In 
this, they were typical of the immense majority of the 
population who without awakened opinion were content 
to remain silent spectators. Even the execution of great 
nobles, certain of whom like the Duke of Buckingham en- 
joyed immense popularity, left the public indifferent. The 
feudal grip had been shattered and they had not yet be- 
come sufficiently identified with the life of the nation to 
make an attack on their liberties indistinguishable from 
those of other subjects. 



86 TUDOR IDEALS 

The direct stimulus to the awakening of public opinion 
occurred through a series of events mainly fortuitous, 
yet which, coming at a time when the nation's intelligence 
was being rapidly developed, created the beginnings of a 
public conscience. If at first this responded imperfectly, 
it was because of the essential novelty of the procedure, 
the unfamiliarity of methods of expression, and the igno- 
rance of its own strength. Even with such handicaps it 
threatened the foundations of the throne and made the 
most imperious of monarchs demean himself in the effort 
to win opinion to his side. 

Henry VIII's desire to be rid of Katherine had to take 
cognizance of the extent to which this shocked his sub- 
jects. The obedience of the nation, disposed to acquiesce 
in the most extreme manifestations of royal authority, 
was stirred by an action which shook the foundations of 
its life. The king had touched at one of those established 
rules noticed by the Italian traveller and the most mas- 
terful prince that ever sat on the English throne, embarked 
on the most extraordinary act of his reign, found that he 
had aroused an unsuspected body of adverse opinion. The 
queen's popularity was never so great, and the crowd 
thronged to cheer her as she passed. The king found him- 
self compelled to summon an assemblage of judges, nobles, 
and citizens in the great hall at Bridewell and there de- 
fend his course. And later, when urged by an audacious 
member in Parliament to return to his lawful queen, Henry 
swallowing his pride, argued with him in defence of his 
action. The resentment was intense throughout the na- 
tion. It was sufficient to cause the royal council to begin 
by opposing his marriage to Anne Boleyn, and find sup- 
port even from Anne's father who dreaded its conse- 
quences. William Peto, provincial of the Friars Observ- 
ant, warjied the king that he was endangering his crown 
by this, " for great and little were murmuring at 
it." 3 

The king saved himself from the worst consequences of 



PUBLIC OPINION 87 

his audacity by coupling Katherine's cause with the un- 
popular one of Rome. His victory might have been doubt- 
ful if he had not been adroit enough so to manoeuvre as 
to make his policy appear national in opposition to the 
Pope's wish to mix in English affairs. Almost by acci- 
dent, the royal divorce called into life the first explosion 
of public opinion in England. Though the result may 
seem ineffectual its triumph came by compelling the king 
to take cognizance of the new force. The different phases 
attending the divorce, the efforts to enlist common law 
on the royal side, with Cranmer's plan to collect the 
opinions of continental scholars, require no description 
here. They were, perhaps, the first acknowledgment of 
the force of ideas and the desirability of winning over 
the public conscience. 

Something new had arisen in Europe. It was intan- 
gible and its power was indefinite. But it was important 
enough for a tyrant like Henry VIII to seek to conciliate 
it. Imperious as was the royal will, the king who aimed 
to appear in the light of a popular ruler, endeavoured 
to placate the force of this opinion and to enlighten the 
realm about his most intimate doings. It was in the 
nature of an evilly conceived homage to this feeling 
that he wrote to Wallop, the English envoy in Paris, 
to justify the execution of More and Fisher on account 
of their alleged treason and conspiracy. It was in the 
nature of a tribute to public opinion, that the trial of 
Katherine Howard in spite of the prurient details of 
royal domestic life, took place in public in order that it 
might not be said that she had been condemned unjustly.* 

Parliament spasmodically asserted its right to free 
speech, though limitations were placed on this. It lacked 
the feeling of its power and except in the matter of grants, 
was little conscious of its dignity. Possessed of slight 
corporate realization of authority it formed an aggre- 
gate of individuals, restricted in the sense of their duties, 
jealous mainly of their control of appropriations and of 



88 TUDOR IDEALS 

foreign interference, yet in the main subservient to the 
royal will. 

Almost as a favour the Speaker of the House would 
petition for liberty of speech within its precincts.^ 
And not unnaturally so, since Thomas More's opposi- 
tion to Henry VIFs request for a grant, had been resented 
by that prince and came near causing More's execu- 
tion. That royal ideas of members' independence did 
not change, was proved by Elizabeth's treatment of 
Peter Wentworth who having ventured to criticise her 
church policy^ found his speech sequestered while he 
was interned in the Tower where later he died a martyr 
to liberty of speech. 

The sudden growth in importance of public opinion 
was partly due to a circumstance of quite different 
nature, coinciding with the extraordinary events then 
taking place. With the use of the printing press afford- 
ing an instrument of diffusion, the isolation of communi- 
ties came to an end. A movement analogous to the 
centralized power extending its even authority through 
the realm, was now rendered possible by the spread of 
opinion through the printer's press, reaching across 
frontiers and restricted only by limitations in education. 
Its significance as an instrument was not immediately 
realized, though one of the first steps in the strategy of 
Thomas Cromwell's break from Rome, was the printing 
in English of Melanchthon's "Apology" and of the Augs- 
burg Confession. 

After the agricultural rising in Lincolnshire in 1536, 
Berthelet the royal printer published Sir John Cheke's 
"Lamentation" with its argument against civil war as de- 
structive of the Commonwealth, and denouncing rebel- 
lion as the greatest of crimes. The first use of the press 
was largely official, but the possibihty of it being em- 
ployed by others who wished to excite opinion was soon 
noticed. Simon Fish's pamphlets against the clergy, 
although forbidden, were widely hawked about. Numer- 



PUBLIC OPINION 89 

ous anti-clerical and Lutheran tracts were printed by men 
like William Roy, Jerome Barlow, and reformers returned 
from the continent. Satirical in form, these broadsides 
were for the most part directed against the clergy. The 
Government did its utmost to seize and to suppress them, 
but never entirely prevented their circulation. 

Later Mary's Spanish marriage gave further occasion 
for an explosion of adverse criticism. The new force of 
public opinion was aroused by an alliance which ap- 
peared to threaten the national existence. The dividing 
line between unpopularity and revolt was reached at 
once with Wyatt's insurrection. Its failure restrained 
further expressions of disfavour to the ill-treatment of 
Philip's suite, and the compositions of lampoons which 
were circulated even at court.^ The fierce hatred then 
aroused against the Spaniard was later utilized by Eliza- 
beth as a force with which to build the popularity of her 
foreign policy. 

From the middle of the Sixteenth Century, broadsides 
began to be published with increasing frequency, often 
in the form of ballads, with puritan and anti-catholic pur- 
pose. Being cheap, they circulated freely and in the days 
before newspapers afforded popular entertainment. Be- 
tween the printing press and public opinion, a connection 
was now established which awakened the government's at- 
tention to the need for a censorship, created in the year 
following Elizabeth's accession. Except for small hand 
presses granted to each of the Universities, all printing was 
henceforth to be exclusively in the capital, supervised by 
the Primate and the Bishop of London, the better to bring 
it under government control. The charter of the sta- 
tioners' company distinctly states, that as seditious and 
heretical books were daily printed which spread their de- 
testable heresies against the doctrine of the "Holy Mother 
Church," the government had taken means to see how this 
might be prevented, and had therefore granted to the 
ninety-seven members of the Company of Stationers, the 



90 TUDOR IDEALS 

sole right of printing, seizing and burning all prohibited 
books and of imprisoning persons who should print with- 
out this authority.^ 

Except for clandestine pamphlet literature, which the 
government tried to suppress, the popular preachers were 
almost alone in daring to speak their minds, and even to tell 
royalty what was current in men's mouths. The preacher 
in the Sixteenth Century not only expressed but led public 
opinion. Regarding himself as spiritually descended from 
the prophets of Israel, he felt that a power given by God 
lay in his hands, which it was his duty to use before 
kings. ^ Thomas Cromwell fearing such tendencies had 
restricted the right of preaching to priests who received 
crown licenses. This was not sufficient to restrain their out- 
spokenness. Father Peto's frankness before Henry VIII 
had led to his expulsion from England. The same mon- 
arch, however, selected Latimer to be one of his chap- 
lains, although the latter never hesitated in his words 
and reminded the king that it was the preacher's duty to 
reprove the mighty. 

Elizabeth with her view of the clergy as crown officials 
was less tolerant of their liberties. The freedom and 
often tyranny of speech, which the Scottish ministry used 
toward their princes, was blamed south of the Tweed as 
"not only undecent but intolerable, for he may do noth- 
ing, but they will examine and discuss the same in the 
pulpit." ^° Certainly, John Knox in his invectives against 
the two Marys, lost all sense of measure when he declared 
that the nobility of both countries were inferior to the 
beasts of the field because of their subjection to women 
and advocated executing for impiety, anyone capable of 
defending a woman's rule.^^ 

In such explosions there was little sense of fair play 
which springs from the feeling of equity arising in less 
violent times. The lack of restraint was typical of the 
means of expression. Intensity of conviction gave a fierce 
tone to all controversy. Bacon, himself the most reason- 



PUBLIC OPINION 91 

able of men, defended this when he wrote that "Bitter 
and earnest writing must not hastily be condemned; 
for men cannot contend civilly and without affectation, 
about things which they hold dear and precious." ^^ 

There were other tests to be applied to such disputes. 
Grooves of action exist as well as of thought, and even 
those indifferent in matters of faith, found it necessary 
to harness their deeds to religious causes. Under the 
guise of creed all kinds of questions could be broached 
and men and policies attacked from behind their religious 
shelter. 

The violence of opinion which raged around theological 
controversies was reflected in the mass of pamphlets 
known as the Martin Marprelate Controversy, of which 
one side emanated from the secret presses. The bishops, 
with official support behind them, identified their own 
position with the throne. They executed John Penry, 
but realizing that mere repressive measures of authority 
were insufficient, and that the growing force of public 
opinion had to be reconciled, enlisted in their aid the lit- 
erary hacks of London. 

For the first time in England professional means ex- 
isted for doing this — pamphleteers able to use their pens 
trenchantly and a public which read their productions. 
Involved and unreadable as the pamphlets of Greene and 
Nash, of Lodge and Dekker, now seem, they were the be- 
ginnings of an appeal made to win over the new force of 
opinion. 

The wider diffusion of education caused a novel inter- 
est to be taken in such matters. With the growth of a 
reading public, writers treated all kinds of questions. 
Elizabeth herself was greatly vexed by a book written 
against the French marriage, severely criticising her.^^ 
The dispute which raged around it shows that opinion was 
far from unanimous. " Leicester's Commonwealth " with 
its attack on the royal favourite is the first great example 
of English scurrilous literature. 



92 TUDOR IDEALS 

The printing press was increasingly utilized as an in- 
strument for the diffusion of ideas. As it was no longer 
possible to ignore the new policy of the government was 
to rely on a public opinion which it hoped to form. 
The queen's desire for popularity and the wish to find her 
aims in harmony with her subjects, stood behind the 
declarations which accompanied royal actions. The crit- 
ical moments of her reign, as well as the inauguration of 
new policies, were attended by the publication of explan- 
ations which came out under official inspiration. After 
the execution of Mary Stuart there appeared the "Jus- 
tification of Queen Elizabeth. " When the laws were pro- 
mulgated against priests and Jesuits, there was published 
the "Great Troubles pretended against the Realm by a 
number of Seminary Priests and Jesuits." The use of 
torture also evoked sufficient reprobation to make ad- 
visable an official explanation. Burleigh employed John 
Stubbes to answer Cardinal Allen, and indicated his 
anti-Roman policy by publishing "Justitia" in English, 
Latin, French and Italian. Before going to the aid of the 
Low Countries, or to that of the Huguenots in France, 
a "Declaration of the causes moving the Queen of Eng- 
land to give aid" appeared in explanation of such policy. 
An official defence of Essex's expedition to Cadiz was 
published. 

The government realized that it was necessary to give 
some attention to guide public opinion along approved 
channels in order to prevent its wandering beyond these. 
From the precautions taken it is evident that the drama 
was thought capable of influencing ideas. Plays had to 
be licensed and playwrights were forbidden to touch on 
matters of religion or the state. It is notorious that the 
censor suppressed certain pages in Holinshed's Chronicle, 
while Shakespeare in " Richard II " incurred displeasure 
by portraying the conquered king making his sub- 
mission. On the eve of his rising, Essex caused this 
play to be given in the hope that the deposition and 



PUBLIC OPINION 93 

murder of a king might encourage an outbreak. Later 
in conversation with the antiquary William Lambarde, 
Queen Elizabeth complained that it had been played 
for this purpose "forty times in open streets and 
houses. " 



XL THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT 

The weakening of authority which marked the end of 
the Middle Ages in England left habits of lawlessness 
not easily shaken off. The disorder of the realm had 
been arrested by the firm rule of Henry VII, but the 
practices developed during a century of anarchy stamped 
their mark on the nation. Except for resort to force, 
the means for manifesting opposition were scanty and 
ineffectual. The importance of Parliament was still 
slight in the life of the country. It might disapprove 
of the king's forfeiture of his enemies' property but, 
willingly or not, it passed such acts. The upshot of Sir 
Thomas More successfully opposing a parliamentary grant 
to Henry VII for his daughter's marriage, was to find 
his father locked in the Tower on a trumped-up charge.^ 

Opposition to the crown had to find expression in 
less legal ways. The vast changes which swept over 
Tudor England could hardly take place without affect- 
ing the convictions, the loyalty, or the economic condi- 
tion of the population. Amid far reaching transfor- 
mations it was not difBcult to touch the springs of former 
lawlessness with its reliance on force. Any appeal to 
dissatisfaction found abundant causes for grievance. 
By an odd paradox, the crown resting on a loftier pin- 
nacle than ever before, with far more potent means of 
defence and authority, was more than ever apprehen- 
sive for its own existence. This was the result of an age 
which to accomplish its purposes resorted to direct- 
ness of means unhampered by scruple or fear. 

The force of authority attempted by every instrument 
of terror to deter men from revolt. The hideous punish- 
ment inflicted on rebels, the confiscation of the traitor's 

94 



THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT 95 

property, the risk to which he exposed his wife and chil- 
dren, were cruel expedients resorted to by the crown in 
order to intimidate. In the main they proved no more 
effective than in Ireland where it became customary for 
prospective rebels to convey all their landed estates to 
trustees, preserving only a life interest in them.^ The 
reason for the failure of revolts was due not to any 
lack of attempts but to causes of another nature. 

The pretext of revolution was nearly always based on 
supposed loyalty. The throne was sacred. Indignation 
against the rightful king was never admitted but only 
against the royal advisers. It was nominally loyal as in 
the case of the " Pilgrimage of Grace. " Bacon remarks 
how it was a common practice for seditious subjects to 
attack not the sovereign, but those who had authority 
under him. The seeds of opposition could always find 
ground under the most lavish professions of loyalty. 
Monarchy exercised too great a prestige among the 
masses to give open rebellion much chance of success. 
Wyatt's revolt, based on the fear of foreign domina- 
tion, failed, because the feeling of loyalty was too strong 
among the people. This, more than any other reason, 
wrecked every revolution. 

Discontent arose from taxation as in the case of the 
Cornish rising, or sympathy for the Church as in the 
Lincolnshire movement, and the rebellion in the West, 
under Edward VI. It acquired a local head, gathered 
impetus and by collecting the forces of unrest, became 
more or less troublesome, but the end was always the 
same. Although hardly a county of England was free 
from revolt at one time or another during the reigns of 
the Tudors, such movements never coincided, and the 
crown was always able to handle each insurrection sepa- 
rately. In this sense it stood for the national power while 
the spirit of revolution was generally one of local anarchy. 

The main reason why revolt was never successful 
may perhaps be found in its cause, invariably coming 



96 TUDO§ IDEALS 

from the wrong direction. The attempts at revolution, 
when not stirred from without, were always conserva- 
tive in purpose and for most part aimed against new 
measures or conditions. The Tudors, by their construc- 
tive innovations, had forced the instinct of revolt into 
reactionary channels. Its spirit was never that of a 
movement trying to bring about definite reforms in 
government. The goal was nearly always toward reaction 
and its tendency would have been to hinder the march 
of progress in the nation. 

Such as it was, the spectre of revolution caused all the 
Tudors serious anxiety. Even in Elizabeth's latter years 
the fear of revolt, due to fiscal exactions, was among the 
causes which made Burleigh desirous for peace with Spain.^ 
Apprehensions of this nature could not have been idle 
fears. The Tudors were doubtless far more conscious than 
we can be to-day, of how slender was the margin of safety 
in their rule, and how great was the risk of giving rein to 
the forces of unrest. What now seem almost gratuitous 
acts of cruelty in suppressing revolt, may therefore 
have been due to a political necessity which took little 
heed of mercy. 

As all power emanated from the royal person, so court 
intrigue was the most insidious form of rebellion. Henry 
VII with clear political sense realized this. Though he 
suppressed the Cornish rising with amazing mildness, 
when he detected conspiracy nearer the throne, not even 
the immense obligations he felt under to Sir William 
Stanley could save the latter's head. The cruel treason 
laws under which Fisher and Thomas More had suffered 
showed how preoccupied was the crown with the thought 
of preventing revolt. The belief of the age was expressed 
in the words that out of subjects' fears grew princes' 
safety. The problem of government was how to accom- 
plish this without incurring the charge of tyranny.^ 

Expedients of different nature were resorted to. A 
draft in the handwriting of Edward VI is extant which 



THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT 97 

planned to make Knights of the Garter swear on their 
investiture to reveal all conspiracies against the sovereign 
head of their order. ^ 

The sense of loyalty diminished as the person of the 
prince was approached, and the latter, who scented the 
waning affection of his environment was perhaps inclined 
to exaggerate the danger. With a people like the Eng- 
lish, the coup d'etat was almost out of question. The 
scope of the individual, however highly placed, was not 
the same as in Italy or even in France. Especially in 
Elizabeth's reign, great established forces existed to 
contend with, and it was well-nigh impossible to win 
men over from their comfortable inertia to the uncer- 
tainty of revolt. Essex, who found his example at the 
Valois Court, hoped in the queen's declining years to 
seize the reins of power. His action was ill prepared 
and spasmodic. Although personally most popular 
with the Londoners, they dreaded the loss of their prop- 
erty and discovered that profit and loyalty coincided. 
He could gain no supporters in the city. The old spirit 
of turbulence had gone out of the nation and Essex' 
quarrel was too personal for men to risk their lives 
for him. His action was at the time compared to that of 
the Guises entering Paris with a few followers and rous- 
ing the capital. But in England the crown was power- 
ful enough to handle any emergency. Above all there 
ruled a woman of decision. What might have succeeded 
if weaker heads had been in authority never came to pass. 

The spirit of revolt remained latent throughout the age. 
Though its action was never successful, it was close to 
the surface in readiness to break out. It was always in 
the minds of political thinkers. When Crowley advo- 
cated forcible resistance to the enclosure of the com- 
mons, he wrote that "we must needs fight it out or else 
be brought to like slavery that the Frenchmen are in." ^ 

Later one of Sidney's arguments against the French 
marriage was the danger it presented of reducing the 



98 TUDOR IDEALS 

English people to the level of French peasants and 
bringing in a servile tyranny with its attendant peril of 
popular inundation.^ 

In contrast to the many who exalted royalty were a 
few who disparaged it. Such arguments were often cath- 
olic and controversial, emanating from Rome and Douai. 
They were none the less put forward by Englishmen and 
were as typical of the lack of moderation of the age 
and of the violence of ideas unhindered by restraint or 
compromise, as were the advocates of divine right. Those 
who advanced them, condemned the servility of doctrines 
of absolutism and ridiculed the idea of kingship being 
inherent in the state of nature or existing since the 
beginning of the world. They argued that common- 
wealths retained their authority to chasten and remove 
kings and even cut off their heads.^ The author of 
"A Conference" cites the long list of deposed English 
monarchs from John to Richard III. If this was not 
lawful, he exclaims, it would be necessary to disavow 
their successors' acts. Catholic writers seeking to under- 
mine the authority of Elizabeth, advanced a theory of 
revolution, which found its realization in the days of 
the Puritan Commonwealth. 

In the contemporary drama also, there are indications 
of the latent turbulence below the surface. Englishmen 
were proud of their martial virtues. They recognized the 
need of a firm hand and gladly accepted its rule so long 
as it remained strong and not unduly oppressive. But 
the disposition to revolt at weakness or injustice was 
never far removed. With the poets' quick intelligence, 
Marlowe appreciated this spirit in his nation. The Scy- 
thian shepherd Tamburlaine reviles, without mercy, the 
fugitive king and then wins the crown for himself. When 
Chosroes revolts against his brother, the King of Persia, 
the latter is made to say: 

** Kings are clouts that every man shoots at." 



THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT 99 

The playwright's choice of historical subjects kept alive 
the remembrance of former days when the nobles curbed 
the royal power. In representing the humiliation of the 
kings they created an unconscious link between the drama 
which the Puritans abhorred and their own later revo- 
lution. Young Mortimer declares in Marlowe's line that 
when commons and nobles join, the king cannot resist 
them.^ 

In the anonymous play of " Edward I," occurs a signif- 
icant passage which flattering the popular audience be- 
trays this undercurrent of restlessness and readiness to 
revolt. 

"The people of this land are men of war, 
The women courteous, mild, and debonair; 
Living their lives at princes' feet 
That govern with familiar majesty. 
But if this sovereign once 'gin swell with pride 
Disdaining commons love which is the strength 
And sureness of the richest commonwealth 
That prince were better live a private life 
Than rule with tyranny and discontent." 

(I, 247, sq.) 



PART II 
THE INDIVIDUAL 



I. THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM 

British medieval imperialism had been defeated by- 
French nationalism. Thrown back on itself, England 
was to pass through a self-centred phase. After every 
great disaster when a nation is shaken to its roots, former 
conventions lose their prestige. The structure which 
generations have patiently built up, crumbles, leaving 
only the rock foundation. Calamities arise from many 
causes but their results are always the same. When au- 
thority, whatever its origin, is deprived of that union of 
power and prestige which makes for orderly government, 
and becomes unequal to the task of justifying its own 
existence, it invites a defiance which in turn leads easily 
to anarchy and civil war. 

The medieval system collapsed when no longer able to 
restrain the pressure of forces which refused to fit into 
its groove. Feudalism, admirably adjusted for a some- 
what primitive military society, became unable to cope 
with the new problems arising from a nation growing in 
strength, even amid reverses. It was less England that 
had been expelled from France than its barons. It was 
less England that suffered from the effects of anarchy 
in the Fifteenth Century than its feudal leaders with 
their henchmen. Hence arose the strange phenomenon 
of a nation which on the surface was ravaged by disorder 
and civil war, yet whose humbler elements in silence 
were preparing the greatness of the morrow. While 
the barons were consuming themselves in their quarrels, 
London and Bristol merchants were growing rich. When 
Henry Tudor placed the crown on his head, the real rev- 
olution he effected was less the result of victory, which 
as leader of the Lancastrians he had won, than in putting 

103 



I04 TUDOR IDEALS 

himself at the head of the new England arising out of 
the ashes of the old. 

English medieval imperialism had done much to re- 
fine and civilize England. The long contact with France 
and the continent encouraged a continuous interchange 
of ideas and tastes. When this was broken, England 
became insular again and its civilization suffered in 
consequence. The English moral nature touched rock 
bottom and appeared again with rude and primitive 
virtues and failings. This was the nationalism of the 
age. It was intolerant, conservative, aggressively reac- 
tionary, with little sympathy for all that was not shaped 
in its ownlmage. So far as it possessed any intellectual 
foundation, it felt instinctively its low capacity of satu- 
ration, with the fear lest the absorption of foreign ingredi- 
ents should threaten its character. It cared only to per- 
petuate its dull self as if the world could produce nothing 
nobler. All this was roughly true not only of England 
during the Fifteenth Century, but of every country trav- 
ersing a dangerous crisis when men turn to the crude 
virtues which spring from homely roots. 

It was the peculiar merit of the Tudors to have taken 
the lead in guiding the English nation from the danger 
of its self-centredness. Their policy was partly deliber- 
ate, even more unconscious, but the result was the same. 
Aiming to increase their own security and enhance their 
power, the effect was to rescue England by novel means 
from the narrow path into which it had strayed. 

Tudor policy deliberately destroyed or reduced those 
intermediate forms of collective authority which had 
arisen during the Middle Ages, and had previously stood 
between the individual and the prince. Out of the 
dust of ruins a fresh edifice of power was built whose first 
beneficiary was the prince. What others lost he gained. 
The expanded position of the nation centred in him at 
the same time as his individual authority rose to an un- 
precedented height. But the immensity of office proved 



THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM 105 

too great and single-handed he could not humanly take 
full advantage of the prize won. 

Unwittingly royal policy favoured the development of 
individualism in its subjects. Intent to destroy the power 
of venerable institutions, the alternative lay in recogniz- 
ing the power of man. The crown, averse to strength- 
ening an already created order, was obliged to have re- 
course to individuals to carry out its policies, and though 
it tried to treat these as servile tools, at the first oppor- 
tunity they escaped from such dependence. The brief 
reign of Edward VI showed to what lengths the ambition 
of those around the throne could go. The new individu- 
alism, vigorous and energetic, was everywhere pushing 
its way. The growth of power was swift and the rigidity 
or prestige of new institutions in unsettled times was still 
insufficiently developed to stand in the path of forceful 
unscrupulousness. 

Consciously and unconsciously the spirit of the age con- 
duced to a new development of personality. The Ren- 
aissance had taught man his moral worth and dignity, 
its opportunities had favoured the assertion of his wildest 
dreams. Suddenly the atmosphere about him became 
enlarged. At a time when the prince's tyranny was 
greatest, by a strange paradox liberty arose out of the 
equality of opportunity presented by the t^ovel conditions 
of life. The old horizons had been brushed aside and so 
long as man refrained from challenging the prince's 
power he was free to roam at will in any field. 

This general condition was characteristic of the Renais- 
sance through Western Europe. But on the continent 
after the first great wave had passed bearing the new in- 
dividualism as a doctrine of life, religious wars brought 
about fresh collective groupings created under the pres- 
sure of necessity. In England, however, new ideas of indi- 
vidualism had been grafted on a stock whose natural 
tradition inclined to rough independence. Soon they ac- 
quired the force of a national trait. Favoured by policy 



io6 TUDOR IDEALS 

and the culture of the Renaissance, individualism has been 
at the root of much of England's greatness, of its enter- 
prise and daring, its fortitude, and its sense of human 
justice. It has also been the partial cause for that spirit 
of isolation which continental nations have so often re- 
proached. 

The individualism common to the whole of Europe in 
the Sixteenth Century, was for historical reasons able to 
survive mainly in England where it passed into the fibre 
of the race. The adjustability of the English system owes 
its origin to this recognition of individual rights, unham- 
pered by the oppression of any institution or caste. The 
bitterness of class hatred which so often left its shadow on 
the continent was little known in England owing to the 
broadness of this principle dating from Tudor times. 

The tolerance of English ideas has come from what is 
perhaps the most characteristic feature of the British na- 
ture, a practical outlook of life which disregards theory, 
and a peculiar talent for compromise which is its result. 
Devotion to abstract ideas has never formed part of the 
English creed. Added to this, neither the ideals of the 
Renaissance, nor of the Reformation, were indigenous 
to British soil. Both were of foreign origin and as such, 
both attached to themselves weaker loyalties than in the 
lands of their birth. Their currents, moreover, traversing 
English life ran in opposite directions. The first pursued 
its downward course from court to people, the second took 
an upward line from people to court. Vertical progresses 
in the path of ideas usually mean a series of adjustments 
before these are able to break through from one layer to 
the other. England compromised with Luther just as 
it had compromised with Pagan antiquity, nationalizing 
both, so to speak, and making both assume English dress. 

The Sixteenth Century in England was marked less by 
the fertility of new ideas than of new energies. It is, per- 
haps, a peculiarity of the British genius to accommodate to 
its purposes the ideas of others. Just as in statecraft the 



THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM 107 

French example was deliberately imitated by the new 
Tudor monarchy, so in every path by which the genius 
of the age was marked, foreign inspiration can be traced. 
Whether in navigation, or in the drama. Englishmen 
borrowed from abroad the invention and the plots of 
others. 

In this, the English mind followed instinct rather than 
theory. It attained enduring effects partly because of 
native virtues, partly favoured by circumstance, but 
partly, too, because untroubled with the labour of dis- 
covery, it was able to take results ready made, incorpo- 
rate these in every degree of assimilation, and strike 
out at once in its quest for success. 

The excess of individualism which for a time ran riot 
was restrained by a series of compromise measures. In 
the effort to create a better organized state, class interest 
as in all new countries tended to follow lines of property. 
To this extent the second half of the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury marked a reaction from the somewhat capricious 
individualism of the first. 

The liberating breath of the Renaissance descending 
lower, spread itself through great classes hitherto un- 
touched. Long after the new ideas had ceased to mean 
more than a cultivated education for the upper classes, 
their influence entered like a serum into the blood of 
the English race to bring forth the magnificent explosion 
of Elizabethan genius. The Virgin Queen herself, to dub 
her by the most questionable of all her virtues, reigned 
over an epic age when life became an adventure. The de- 
scendants of the archers of Crecy were to sail Drake's 
ships, and greater riches were to come from across the 
seas than were ever looted from the towns of France. 
Instead of a pilgrimage to Canterbury, the poet's im- 
agination could make London prentices behold Cleopatra. 
When in a later generation Cromwell dared to strike 
the anointed king, there was behind him and his victim, 
in precept and in act, the daring of the Renaissance. 



io8 TUDOR IDEALS 

The national characteristics of the English in the Six- 
teenth Century, were the traits exhibited by a vigorous 
and gifted race who, after a long intellectual somnolence, 
were suddenly aroused and quickened by a succession 
of such forces as have always stirred mankind. Adven- 
ture, ambition, and patriotic feeling were the impulses, a 
free horizon and boundless opportunity the condition, 
and a fresh outlook with its vision of new worlds, the 
atmosphere. Englishmen reacted to these just as Italians, 
Frenchmen, and Spaniards had reacted. Circumstance, 
and those indefinables which escape analysis, turned the 
English genius in its most enduring form toward ad- 
venture in act and in imagination. The world of poets 
and the world of mariners seemed young again when 
brightened by the new life. In this sense the permanent 
records of that time were written in the very ink of the 
Renaissance. English blood had changed little in the 
interval, but its pulse beat stronger and its quality had 
grown richer with the spirit of the new age. 



11. THE GROWTH OF PERSONALITY 

In the Middle Ages human introspection took a cleri- 
cal garb. Laymen had not yet learned to record their 
sensations, and observation remained impersonal with 
traces of anonymity lingering far into the new age. The 
novelty of the Sixteenth Century in England lay in 
the human outlook extending over a wider horizon than 
ever before. In thought and in action, fresh perspec- 
tives opened, and out of these were formed new ideals 
which shaped the sailor, the poet, the statesman, and the 
soldier. Genius is in itself independent of any age, but 
its expression never lies far remote from the channels 
of its energy. Hamlet could not have been written 
before England had ripened into the fulness of her own 
humanity. , 

The threads of this development are not easy to unravel. 
Men's grosser reactions to environment can be followed, 
but the subtler influences of human evolution remain 
obscure. The flow of ideas and varying nature of their 
pressure become elusive so soon as one seeks to pierce 
beyond the surface. 

The intellectual history of the Sixteenth Century in Eng- 
land, was not so much one of originality, as of the ex- 
tension of ideas into channels previously unknown. The 
outlook on life alters less readily by direction than un- 
consciously or by circumstance, and the novelty of the 
age arose through the transformation of a medieval tradi- 
tion as soon as it had been brought into sight of fresh 
horizons. The new political, religious, and geographical 
conditions, which arose haphazardly, all reacted on the 
mind of the age to bring about something novel which 
made the work of reconstruction soon out-distance the 
destruction of the ancient fabric. 

109 



no TUDOR IDEALS 

There are moments in the lives of nations when these 
renovate themselves and shed the encumbrances of a past 
no longer in relation with actual conditions. The Sixteenth 
Century was an age when men were most sensitive to 
impressions. Amid the chaos of new ideas the English 
for a time lost their moorings. They had shaken off Rome 
without entirely replacing it. They had shaken off scho- 
lastic discipline without finding its equivalent in antiq- 
uity. The old sanctions had been destroyed but new 
ones had not yet filled their place. 

Confusion marked the first half of the century in Eng- 
land. Crude and ill-digested ideas of power, and of creed, 
bore little relation to the gropings of the nation. The 
result became apparent in the contradictory aspects of life, 
the wide extremes between ideals and practice, and the 
deep rifts which then separated the community. A feeling 
of restless insecurity set in, little conducive to the growth 
of finer aspirations. The brilliant dawn of the early Re- 
naissance in England was followed by a grey sky. For 
half a century the country seemed at a standstill. 

Many men of that age remained baffled by events they 
could not explain. They suffered or profited by results 
which in themselves seemed mysterious. To-day, in 
the light of another perspective, the great figures of Eng- 
lish history appear less as originators of new forces than 
as diverting these to their own benefit. The first half of 
the Sixteenth Century proved a period of adjustment 
necessarily rough and incomplete between two ages at dif- 
ferent levels. The work of destruction and of expansion 
proceeded side by side, advanced or retarded according 
to circumstance or design, but resulting in a continuous 
transformation. The moral disorder characterizing it 
was almost inseparable from an epoch which had lost its 
bearings. 

During these years, a variety of circumstances of dif- 
ferent order coincided to free the individual from his early 
horizon and open before him new perspectives. The dis- 



THE GROWTH OF PERSONALITY in 

covery of antiquity, of America, and the revolt from Rome, 
form the elementary commonplaces of such observation. 
But vast changes come about less by conscious than by 
silent action. We are prone to remark only the great 
landmarks of the past. The enumeration of universally 
recognized facts, does not lead much beyond these, 
and their direct influence may even mislead. After the 
revelation which the discovery of antiquity had been to 
the early humanists, save for a select few it became merely 
an accepted system of education, handed down to our 
own day almost as meatless as the medieval scholastic 
discipline it replaced. The fastidious taste of classical 
scholarship exercised little direct influence on the English 
mind though its indirect and popular reactions were of 
greater value. The Ancient World lived again only when 
the public took crude hold of it in much the same way 
as it seized on any new fashion to make it part of life. 

In matters of faith we are apt to think of Henry VIII's 
break from Rome as part of the broad movement of Augs- 
burg and Geneva. But far from leading men to think out 
the problem of their salvation, the Reformation in Eng- 
land, for the vast majority of the population, meant merely 
exchanging foreign papal supremacy for the national one 
of the crown. The official movement, save for one brief 
period, settled down into the comfortable doctrine of an 
established church. The fact that crown and people were 
for the most time in unison, took sharpness out of a strug- 
gle which was mainly carried on by catholic martyrs and 
puritan extremists. 

The more complete is the acceptance of great ideas the 
more negligible they become, for character develops 
from the clash of principle. The moral fibre of the nation 
was to be afl^ected more by the Puritan struggle under the 
Stuarts, than by the easy victory of the Tudor Reforma- 
tion. So little had the essentials of life then altered that 
many still believe Shakespeare to have been a Catholic, 
while from his writings it is impossible to discern his creed. 



112 TUDOR IDEALS 

The growth of personaHty was due not so much to ob- 
vious and oft-cited causes as to less conspicuous reasons. 
Great events introduced new elements into life, but these 
remained beyond the nation's ken so long as they were 
not assimilated by the silent workings of unseen reactions. 
To render them so they had first to be broken up by means 
which often made them unrecognizable from their original 
form. New ideas in themselves were insufficient. A few 
enthusiasts might grasp their meaning, but to the bulk 
of the nation they continued alien and indigestible. Those 
instincts inherent in any healthy people which make for 
its unity and form the unsconscious fibre of its national- 
ism, were refractory to direct proselytism from abroad. 
The Renaissance could sweep over Italy like a new gospel 
because it revived there the glories of its own past and 
continued its traditions. In England it found its welcome 
mainly at the court which stood above the roots of na- 
tional life and by its reception of novelties unconsciously 
performed a function of usefulness in the state. But be- 
low it in the broadening circles of the English people the 
spirit of the Renaissance met with a travesty of compre- 
hension which transformed its nature. 

The genius of the nation lay in transforming the mix- 
ture of foreign and native traits and blending them together 
in every stage of assimilation. Often the want of under- 
standing helped them to become English. In this sense the 
very blunders committed acted as a flood gate which kept 
out the tide from abroad. Foreign ideas entered into the 
national life, misunderstood, and acquired their British 
denizenship less by comprehension than by error — for error 
is as great a factor in human evolution as is understanding. 
And error also possesses its utility in human progress. A 
more discriminating sense of the meaning of the Renais- 
sance would have produced a greater scission in England 
between those who felt the revelation of its baptism and 
the barely awakened mass who remained beyond its ken. 
The fact that its grasp was restricted to a few cour- 



THE GROWTH OF PERSONALITY 113 

tiers and classical scholars at the Universities without 
other influence on the nation, allowed England to acquire 
the lessons of antiquity not from the reading of purists 
but by mistakes which were common to all. 

The growth of personality was due less to imitation 
than to the adaptation of new influences reacting on 
novel circumstances. The Tudor princes recognized the 
full significance of these and placed themselves astride 
the currents of the age. But the reactions proved greater 
than even their foresight could realize. England was 
touched in its most sensitive fibre, and out of a strange 
medley, noble and base, a richer life was born. 

New ideas are always most vigorous with their first har- 
vest. The vitality of the nation had for so many years 
been treasured up almost unexpended, that it could sud- 
denly display itself with exuberant vigour. The rich per- 
sonalities of the age sprang from a strong people who after 
having long been starved in their ideas, and imprisoned 
within a narrow outlook, experienced the sensation of 
freedom produced by a broader perspective. Suddenly 
the nation found its soul in the least expected way. It 
was steadied by the menace of foreign danger and buoyed 
up by the new discoveries overseas. When after St. Bar- 
tholomew, Protestant hopes crumbled in France, Eng- 
land assumed the leadership of the cause. The Protes- 
tant continent turned to Elizabeth in the great fight 
with Spain, and when finally she emerged victorious, 
it was not merely that her arms had triumphed, but 
that something had been acquired in the mental horizon 
of men, which came not from books but from a new 
knowledge of the world. Scholarly England lagged be- 
hind other states of Western Europe, but Englishmen 
were then many with a broad outlook over the world 
beyond the seas and with a mental view which came 
more from events than out of books. 

The real lesson of the Renaissance is not to be found 
in the learning of its scholars but in the breadth of view 



114 TUDOR IDEALS 

which urged men to dare all. When this had been achieved 
its true spirit had been assimilated into English life. 

The growth of personality in the Sixteenth Century was 
thus the product of two circumstances of different nature 
contributing to one result. The first had come from the 
destruction of the past — feudalism, monasticism, scholas- 
ticism, Rome — the veneration or affection for all had been 
destroyed. But out of the ruins, another structure had 
arisen built largely with former materials blended with the 
new. England became conscious of being embarked on a 
new enterprise. Patriotism was exalted, greed was awak- 
ened by the hope of wealth, a new world without owner- 
ship was open to whoever dared, and Englishmen dared 
the venture. 

These were the main conditions which gave a freer 
rein to personality and encouraged the growth of that 
splendid expansion of the mind working in its achieve- 
ment through an ever-widening circle. It was carried out 
among a people still living among old traditions though 
ruled from above with the spirit of the Renaissance. 

At any other time the transformation which then took 
place would have been attended by far graver consequences 
as in France and in Germany. The weaker royal power 
might not have succeeded in guiding it before. Later the 
people would have found more strength to curb their 
masters. The extraordinary events of the first half of the 
Sixteenth Century in England were rendered possible by 
the development of the crown preceding that of the people. 
The expansion which threw such brilliancy on the latter 
years of the century, was due to the people having caught 
up in the race with their rulers, and conditions existing for 
the first time which allowed a free outlet for the energy of 
all. 



III. THE VICISSITUDES OF FORTUNE 

Strong men shape their opportunities best during pe- 
riods of swift change, and the dissolution of the medieval 
structure in England left conditions fluid enough to fa- 
vour the rise of the individual. Success leaves its origins 
quickly behind and the remembrance of Bosworth Field 
alone lingered after the early years passed by Henry 
Tudor as a tracked and penniless refugee in Brittany 
with hardly a shred of title to the throne, had been for- 
gotten. His example encouraged others in audacity. 
No Casanova went through stranger vicissitudes than 
the son of the Tournai boatman Perkin Warbeck, simu- 
lating the murdered Duke of York, and accepted at courts 
as a royal pretender. Far more than the cautious Tudor, 
his demeanour gave men the impression of kingliness. 
His wife of Scottish blood royal was devoted to him. 
Even in adversity he found admirers and when led through 
London a spectacle fey the multitude, the crowd remarked 
that he bore his misfortune bravely. 

The vicissitudes in fortune of women like Anne Boleyn or 
Katherine Howard could hardly be paralelled in any other 
age. In Byzantium, women even of the lowest origin had 
attracted the prince's fancy and shared with him the 
purple. But never before could a woman like Anne Boleyn 
from inconspicuous beginnings have become the centre 
of discord for Christian Europe, only to be destroyed by 
the same hand which raised her. The royal power had 
been elevated to such a pitch that whatever touched it 
rose to sink as quickly again when favour ceased. 

For whoever was born under the shadow of the throne 
or approached it, life was near to danger. When Lord 
Burleigh was accused, in a contemporary libel of the wish 

"5 



ii6 TUDOR IDEALS 

to marry his grandchild William Cecil to Lady Arabella 
Stuart, Bacon could find no better argument to demon- 
strate the falsity of the charge than to say that Lord 
Burleigh's wisdom taught him " to leave to his posterity 
rather surety than danger. Marriage with the blood royal 
was too full of risk to be lightly entered into. " 

Few there were of any prominence free from moments 
of grave peril. Four women during the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury claimed the English throne, the two Marys, Lady 
Jane Grey, and Elizabeth. Two lived in danger of their 
lives and two ended theirs on the scaffold. Elizabeth many 
years after told a French ambassador that while a pris- 
oner at Woodstock, she felt certain that she would be 
executed, and made up her mind to ask in sole request 
of her sister Mary, that instead of an axe, a sword be 
used as in France, and a French executioner be sent for 
from Calais.^ Later as queen she lived in expectation of 
assassination. The vicissitudes of her own experience 
could not do otherwise than react on a character which re- 
mained unsoftened. The memory of her mother disgraced 
and executed, herself declared illegitimate, and passed 
over in the succession, stamped her personality. Re- 
plying to a petition of Parliament, she dwelt on her expe- 
riences of the world. She had known what it was to be a 
subject and what to be a sovereign. She had found trea- 
son and distrust and ingratitude. She took little pleasure 
in life and saw little terror in death.^ 

Below the throne men rose from nothing, tasted the 
sweets of power, and returned to nothing. Wolsey's 
elevation to an authority which was Oriental if it had 
not been Renaissance, was almost as precipitate as his 
fall. He accepted his disgrace like a Moslem fatalist. 
When summoned to surrender his seal of office and give up 
his belongings no word of blame escaped him. He wished 
the world to know that as his riches and honours had 
come from the king it was his duty to surrender all to 
him.^ His attendant and biographer Cavendish, com- 



THE VICISSITUDES OF FORTUNE 117 

ments in Eastern fashion on his fall. It was folly to ex- 
press surprise at this, for it rested in the order of events. 

Even more precipitate was the career of Thomas 
Cromwell. The son of a Putney blacksmith, he had 
been an inconspicuous soldier of fortune in Italy, a trader, 
a money-lender and a lawyer. He had been employed 
by the great Cardinal and risen with his fall. He had 
been used by the king and adorned his throne with the 
wealth and power of the Church, till the royal favour 
forsaking him his head had rolled on the scaffold. 

The French traveller Perlin, during his visit to London 
in 1558, was impressed by the uncertainty of English 
life. One day, he remarked, one sees a man as a great 
lord, the next he is in the hands of an executioner. The 
Jesuit Parsons, enumerated the mighty, executed or 
degraded under Henry VIII — two queens, Anne Boleyn 
and Catherine Howard, three Cardinals, Wolsey, Pole 
and Fisher, the last beheaded, three dukes "put down," 
Buckingham, Suffolk and Norfolk, the first two losing 
lands and lives, the last lands and liberty, a marquess, 
Devonshire, two earls, Kildare and Surrey, the latter be- 
headed, two countesses condemmed to death, Devon- 
shire and Salisbury, the latter executed, while of peers 
he mentions Darcy, Hersey, Montagu, Leonard Grey, 
Dacres of the South and Cromwell. All this within the 
space of twenty years and in peace.* 

As is still the case in Oriental states where rule is 
personal, the visible and invisible structure of restraint 
had not yet grown to limit the full scope of either success 
or disfavour. The emergence of free personality in the 
Renaissance began by giving an unchecked bridle to 
the prince's authority with the resulting suppression of 
those who had lost his favour. The first condition of 
disgrace was the forfeiture of property, but death was 
close at hand even to those who felt themselves most 
secure. The ebb of the same tide which carried them 
high was often the cause for their undoing. 



ii8 TUDOR IDEALS 

Such conditions came from the prince's swollen power 
reacting on a situation of insufficient stability or tradi- 
tion. The crown had drawn as a magnet some of the 
best, the indifferent and the worst elements in the realm, 
and these ill-fused and with spheres ill-defined, clashed 
incoherently around the royal person. The still imma- 
ture structure of the state had not yet caught up with 
the over rapid expansion of life. The authority which 
filled the uncharted spaces, favoured the precipitate 
rise in fortune of those able to profit by their oppor- 
tunities. National evolution had not yet reached a 
point where the margin of fortune was reduced to the 
conventional and orderly proportions of more stable 
times. 

Such sudden changes quickened the pulse of feeling 
and lent a dramatic quality to life. The contemporary 
Sir Robert Naunton, described Raleigh's career in words 
which could be applied to many others, that fortune 
had used him as a tennis ball; "for she tossed him up 
of nothing and to and fro to greatness and from thence 
down to little more than that wherein she found him. " ^ 
Raleigh himself said finely, " For conversation of partic- 
ular greatness and dignity there is nothing more noble 
and glorious than to have felt the force of every fortune. 
. . . He only is to be reputed a man whose mind can- 
not be puffed up by prosperity nor dejected by any ad- 
verse fortune." ^ 

The prevalence of such vicissitudes reacted on charac- 
ter. They freed energy by opening high perspectives and 
infused a finer temper of courage, by making the men of 
that age ripen in an atmosphere of danger. But the 
same atmosphere also produced fatalism and a callous- 
ness to the misery of others. When peril menaced 
all, men became indifferent to it. Personality acquired 
both a greater elasticity and a hardening sheath. It 
grew richer through nearness to extremes and the rapid 
passage through many phases. Some played like gam- 



THE VICISSITUDES OF FORTUNE 119 

biers with life, for the age was as acquisitive as it was 
venturesome and many risked all for the wish to gain. 
Daring adventure, the power to will and stake all, 
if need be, on a single throw of the dice, arrogance in 
prosperity, fortitude in disaster were the traits held up 
for admiration. The same characteristics which had 
once gained a throne were now diffused by the Renais- 
sance spirit descending into an ever-widening circle. 

"That like I best that flies beyond my reach" 

says Marlowe's Guise.^ 

Sir Thomas Stukely, pirate, adventurer, even traitor 
to his sovereign, was a popular hero, in whose mouth 
Peele puts the doctrine of virtu: 

"There shall no action pass my hand or sword 
That cannot make a step to gain a crown 



King of a molehill had I rather be 

Than the richest subject of a monarchy." ^ 

Spenser could write : " One joyous hour in blissful hap- 
piness " was preferable to a life of wretchedness. The 
gospel of the Renaissance was one of life, with all its 
adornments. The new idea of immortality was the 
ancient one arising out of life and not of death. Let 
friars and philosophers call the soul immortal, the real 
contribution of the age was that life could also become so. 
A heroic age in the history of a nation does not mean that 
its baser instincts have been subdued. The century was 
material and sordid in spite of the fine elements in its fibre. 
Often the same activity which stirs the highest, animates 
the lowest as well and makes such sides of life assume 
a distorted prominence. Spenser might hold Mammon 
to scorn. Lyly, who with all his conceits was closer in 
touch with life than the poet, complained that in England 
it was "as in every place all for money." ^ 

Daring recklessness was no universal characteristic, 
and the conservative elements arising with the growth 



I20 TUDOR IDEALS 

of the new propertied class were to bring to the fore 
other traits of caution. Extreme pliability is the reac- 
tion of the prudent to danger. Not all were caught by 
the fervour of ambition to risk everything. In that age 
of swift change some veered to every breeze, became 
sceptical and cynical and barefacedly changed their 
coats. The contemporary epigram of the statesman 
who owed his success to resembling the willow rather 
than the oak throws light on Paulet's character. Sir 
John Mason, Ambassador at the French Court, has left 
his own maxims of success during such times. He spoke 
little and wrote less. He was always intimate with the 
sharpest lawyer and the ablest favourite. Having 
reached a point where each party regarded him as ser- 
viceable to them, he was so moderate that all thought 
him their own. Pliability marked many of the foremost 
figures of the time. Men with feeble convictions made 
little difficulty in changing their opinions to escape dan- 
ger or to gain reward. Such opportunism was the cor- 
rective to the risks of the age. 

With few exceptions a strain of great prudence ran 
through all the Tudor advisors. The lesson of Wolsey, 
More, and Cromwell had not been lost, and men like 
Paget and Cecil found caution more conducive to success. 
Cecil had changed his creed with every sovereign. His 
prudence was such, that when presenting drafts of 
policy to the queen, he was always careful to point out 
their drawbacks as well as their advantages. His worldly 
wisdom down to the most commonplace details trans- 
pires in his advice to his son. The cautious counsellor of 
the prince without impulse or fire, was no fanciful crea- 
tion. The sharp vicissitudes of fortune had found their 
own corrective in the statesman, who offered no hold for 
a royal whim to break. The anger of the queen could 
rightly exhaust itself on a Norfolk or an Essex. Her own 
caution had engendered a school of ministers who shared 
it with her. 



IV. VIOLENCE IN PRIVATE LIFE 

The atmosphere of violence which marked the end of 
the Middle Ages was succeeded by an age where violence 
became confined to the individual. The state might be 
regulated, but not personal character with its immediate 
inheritance dating from a century of anarchy. The idea 
of redress by private action, was living to men with 
whom the foundations of order rested on slight security 
and where other methods of restraint did not exist. For 
good or for evil far more then lay within the reach of the 
individual. This perhaps helps to explain the flagrant 
disregard of political morality. 

English practices remained idyllic compared with those 
prevalent at the Valois Court, but survivals of the old 
lawless spirit left their trace. Philip Sidney threatened 
to thrust his dagger into his father's secretary whom he 
suspected of opening his private letters. 

The point of honour masked the desire for brawling. 
The duel was of current practice in spite of innumerable 
arguments against its absurdity.^ Europe sat for its 
manners at the footstool of Italy and the Italian spirit of 
private vengeance was everywhere understood. La- 
ertes professed satisfaction with Hamlet's apology but 
not "in my terms of honour." His treachery in seeking 
to kill him with a poisoned rapier carried out the Italian 
idea of injured honour demanding vindication. 

Those too timorous to take the law into their own 
hands found worse means. Hired bravi were not un- 
known in England and Lord Oxford tried to have Sidney 
murdered. John Stanhope with twenty men attempted 
to kill Sir Charles Cavendish.^ Leicester was charged 
with seeking to assassinate the French Envoy Simier who 
had informed the queen about his secret marriage to 



122 TUDOR IDEALS 

Lady Essex. ^ Whatever may have been the truth of Amy 
Robsart's death, pubHc opinion attached it to him and 
accused him of poisoning his enemies through his Itahan 
physician de Juho. ^ Lord Essex's death was said to 
have been due to an "Italian recipe," for poison was 
supposed to be given in small doses leaving no traces, but 
slowly sapping the organism so skilfully that men could 
be made to die from any disease. Its presence was al- 
ways suspected in the case of deaths for which medical 
skill could not account. 

Crime was probably often alleged without foundation. 
Its chronicle is not peculiar to any age and it would be 
easy to piece out of our own times a network of evil 
deeds as ferocious as any of the Renaissance. The fact 
that popular imagination was so impressionable to the 
narrative of violence, and that a commonplace murder 
like that of Arden of Feversham attracted much at- 
tention, rather suggests its rarity. 

Human imagination is at all times interested in the 
narration of crime, and the story of the much abused 
Wild Darell is in no way peculiar to the century. 
Less criminal manifestations of violence were more typi- 
cal, like the well-known anecdote about Richard Gren- 
ville showing his fortitude at a dinner with Spanish cap- 
tains, by chewing glass. This incident, unimportant 
enough in itself, was the counterpart in action of the ideal 
of frightfulness in Marlowe. When Tamburlaine makes 
the captured Emperor Bajazet act as his footstool, 
when he cuts his arm to teach his son courage, and then 
kills him because he is a coward, when he harnesses kings 
as horses to his chariot, slaughters the virgins of Da- 
mascus or drowns the inhabitants of Babylon, he expressed 
in poetry the Renaissance love of the terrible in art, 
and of violence as a characteristic of greatness. Re- 
straint found no place in the literary canons of the age. 

Letters and life have a differing relation to each other 
which makes all generalization dangerous. The Eliza- 



VIOLENCE IN PRIVATE LIFE 123 

bethan drama with its portrayal of crime and violence, 
was not representative of English life. The frequency 
of vengeance on the stage suggests that this motive 
as an incentive to crime was readily understood, but 
it was associated more with Italy where the absence of 
central authority and the inadequacy of the law, favoured 
the wronged individual taking the remedy into his own 
hands. 

The spirit of the Renaissance and in a sense its great- 
ness, was due to the quest of a single purpose in the 
face of every obstacle. To attain an end, restraint was 
abandoned, although in England violence no longer formed 
part of daily life and in a sense had become exotic. On 
native soil its manifestations beyond vulgar crime were 
sporadic. Yet its spirit still lingered close to the imagina- 
tion. In the " Winter's Tale" Leonates tries to poison his 
guest and lifelong friend whom he suspects of seducing 
his wife. When in doubt as to the truth of charges 
made against his daughter he feels it incumbent that his 
honour be violently avenged. Perhaps one reason why 
the Elizabethan drama save in the greater Shakesperian 
masterpieces remains so dead to us, is the lack of con- 
tact between modern life and private vengeance. The 
Englishman of the Sixteenth Century had still enough 
associations with former recollections of violence to make 
the crimes of Italy appear not altogether remote. 



V. THE EVOLUTION OF WOMAN 

Medieval ideas of women survived long after the 
Middle Ages were ended. Any established order when 
challenged will always find defenders and the first asser- 
tions of feminism were denounced by theologians who 
invoked the contempt of the church fathers to prove 
woman's inferiority as divinely ordained. Hugh Latimer 
denounced the sex as designed by Providence to be un- 
derlings.^ Knox's thunderbolts against women are 
famous, though he lived surrounded by them. Even a 
poet like Lyndsay could write in jingling rhyme 

"So all women in their degree 
Should to their men subject be." ^ 

The idea then widely entertained of women as an infe- 
rior sex was not so remote from facts. Taken as a whole, 
they had hardly moved with the times and until late in 
the Sixteenth Century the great mass of womanhood 
remained densely ignorant. 

The extraordinary diversity of the age is nowhere 
better realized than in the wide extremes of feminism. 
To the few striking exariiples of learned women can be 
contrasted the great silent class of illiterates. Shake- 
spere's mother, the daughter of a rich farmer, could prob- 
ably not write her own name.^ The penetration of 
other ideas of education in women was hindered more by 
inertia and indifference than by any wilful intention to 
resist them. 

The Renaissance brought about a revolution in the 
position of women. Beginning with a few, its leaven 
spread gradually through widening circles over the land. 
The aristocratic view of history is no longer in keeping 

124 



THE EVOLUTION OF WOMAN 125 

with modern ideas, but it is hard to think in terms of the 
past without undue attention to the great, or fail to dis- 
cern in them necessary factors in human progress. Be- 
fore the Sixteenth Century, the lives of women apart 
from a few of exalted station was well-nigh anony- 
mous. Some like Margaret of Richmond, or Edward 
IV's sister the Duchess of Burgundy, rising from the void 
around them, owed their prominence to birth or to 
exceptional circumstances. A Dame Juliana Berners 
was little more than the isolated example of a prioress 
with a knowledge of French and a taste for books. The 
immense majority of women even of high estate remained 
inconspicuous and unknown. 

During the Sixteenth Century, the cause of women 
suddenly found support as unconscious as it was unex- 
pected through circumstances of entirely different order. 
The excess of individualism first manfested in the 
swollen powers of the crown, brought other surprising 
reactions. The disparaging view of women grew silent as 
soon as their cause became inseparable from royalty. 
Judgment ceased as it approached the throne, and the 
awe inspired by majesty allowed prejudices of sex to be 
quickly overcome. When England, France, and Scotland 
were governed by women, it was impossible to speak of 
them as inferiors, and Knox discovered regretfully that 
it was necessary to recant to Elizabeth for his invective 
against the sex uttered when Mary's rule had kept him 
in unwelcome exile. The women then seated on the 
throne, unconsciously and unintentionally helped to 
prepare the way for the improved condition of their 
humbler sisters. 

The example of feminine rule, which was not unknown 
during the Middle Ages, would in itself have been in- 
sufficient had not the ground been prepared by other 
means. The new spirit of the Renaissance favoured this 
through education. The great changes which took place 
in the life and importance of women after the accession 



126 TUDOR IDEALS 

of Henry VIII, were due less to that prince's uxorious 
tastes than to the spirit of cultivation emulated from the 
Valois Court. In this connection the king's personal 
proclivities cannot easily be dismissed. Amid the strug- 
gle for success through royal favour, everyone realized 
that the great reason for the divorce had been Katharine's 
personal unattractiveness compared with the French 
educated Anne Boleyn. The latter without pedantic 
learning possessed an easy familiarity with letters ac- 
quired at the French Court, where she had known 
Clement Marot and Berquin. Such accomplishments 
helped to enthrall a monarch who like all the Tudors, 
responded to every form of learning. Dissolute and 
grasping as was the temper of the English Court, a new 
standard of grace and cultivation had fortunately been 
introduced in place of the uncouthness of former days. Su- 
perior refinements were now expected from women, and 
Ann of Cleves found to her cost, that ignorance of music 
and of languages were among the reasons which made her 
meet with so little favour in the king's eyes. 

At the court national prejudices yielded before the 
example set from above. In this sense the royal taste 
reflected in those around the throne, was instrumental 
in favouring the education of women. Their emanci- 
pation which began by the importance they assumed in 
court life, was to spread gradually over the land. The 
evolution of womanhood by education toward freedom 
was far more important than the mere revelation of 
the classics which were only the instruments to bring 
this about. Of greater significance than the accom- 
plishments of such learned creatures as Ann Cheke, 
or the Latin verse written by Protector Somerset's daugh- 
ters, was the fact that in this new conception of life in- 
troduced by the Renaissance, the education of women 
formed an essential part. That such ideas at first, hardly 
extended beyond the court and the higher reaches of 
the social structure, does not detract from the immense 



THE EVOLUTION OF WOMAN 127 

importance of the movement which was one side in the 
liberation of human personaHty. 

The growth of these ideas was aided by a national tra- 
dition of feminine freedom characteristic of Northern 
lands. Foreigners were struck by the greater liberty of 
Englishwomen compared with their Continental sisters. 
Erasmus* account of his welcome in an English home 
requires no repetition. When Italian travellers won- 
dered at the lack of jealousy on the part of British hus- 
bands, it is likely that they gave a more malicious in- 
terpretation to domestic relations than was warranted 
by the facts. The English nature is never long success- 
ful in disguising itself and was, doubtless, tolerant where 
it found no cause for a suspicion it did not feel. 

The absence in England of a less rigid discipline of 
life than existed on the Continent, made women react 
more unevenly to the new ideas. Innovations were not 
confined to book-lore. In Queen Mary's reign the liberty 
of Englishwomen scandalized the Spanish ladies who ac- 
companied their husbands to England, and had been 
accustomed to the staidness of their own bigoted court. 
The Duchess of Alba after a single experience would 
not show herself again, while other Spanish ladies re- 
fused to be presented because of the alleged evil con- 
versation of Englishwomen.'^ 

New ideas were not confined to educational doctrine. 
Among the upper classes, who had always been, accus- 
tomed to greater freedom, a feeling of independence in 
thought and conduct grew up among women. A slack- 
ening of parental and marital discipline conduced to 
more liberty. Women of the higher classes became ac- 
customed to thinking and acting for themselves. The 
new woman of the day, full of the feeling of her own per- 
sonality, aped men in games and in attire, and a puri- 
tan moralist could blame her for not blushing to wear 
doublets and jerkins so that her very sex became a mat- 
ter of doubt.^ 



%. 



128 TUDOR IDEALS 

The development of refinement in any community 
arises mainly from the influence of women exercised 
in urban intercourse. But the manners of the Six- 
teenth Century in England were derived from the 
rough traditions of feudal and country life. The age 
was not refined in any later sense of the word. 
Elizabeth spat on a courtier, and invited Marshal Biron 
and his suite to assist at her toilet, where through the 
palace windows she showed him the head of Essex still 
on the Tower.® Modern writers unable to shake off the 
stamp of the genteel, stand aghast at the coarseness of 
the age, when they do not detect in this the sign of its 
virility. Women in England had not yet realized that 
their influence would grow in measure with the refine- 
ment they were able to impose on their surroundings. 

Then, as now, social extremes acted differently and 
the great mass was little aware of what actually took 
place in higher circles. Holinshed described the court 
ladies passing their time reading history and the Scrip- 
tures, while the younger ones occupied themselves with 
music and spinning. Harrison depicts their pastimes 
in much the same way and draws a picture of the palace 
which resembles a school.^ But Harrison frankly says 
that he had hardly dared to peep at the royal gates, and 
Holinshed was a poor country parson. Both drew an 
ideal image of what they wished to believe life to be in 
the royal proximity, which might satisfy the growing 
thirst for information on the part of the reading classes. 

So artificial a picture corresponded but little with re- 
ality. The life of women fighting for success, for power, 
or the gratification of vanity, was perhaps much the 
same in the Sixteenth Century as in other ages. Ambi- 
tion and jealousy, love, hate, and greed, have always 
been the mainsprings of human action. The in- 
fluence of the time lay in the spirit of the Renaissance 
weaving its web of learning across life and framing action 
amid a pedantism which became a second nature. When 



THE EVOLUTION OF WOMAN 129 

Mary Stuart at the age of thirteen recited a Latin ora- 
tion before the French Court, in which she defended 
the right of women to be versed in letters and the hb- 
eral arts,^ when Elizabeth retired to her study to read a 
Greek orator, they unconsciously were obeying the new 
spirit of the age. Woman is always the conservative 
sex. But in the atmosphere of the court, household cares 
were less exacting, and the close neighbourhood of the sexes 
brought these together on a nearer level of cultivation. 

A reading class was growing whose roots in the palace 
expanded beyond its walls to leaven the upper reaches 
of English life. Lyly was the discoverer of this circle 
and of the influence women were then beginning to 
exercise. He urged them to read while fondling their 
lap dogs, and declared that he would prefer to see his 
book "lie shut in a ladies casket than open in a scholar's 
study." His themes of passionless love and preciosity, 
were welcomed by a feminine audience in quest for re- 
finement, who found in Lyly what they could not dis- 
cern in Shakespeare. The literature of the drawing 
room began with his novels. 

His Eupheuism with all its absurdity created a fem- 
inine audience. A wide circle of interest had been awak- 
ened and women henceforth occupied themselves in- 
creasingly with cultivated activities. The Countess 
of Pembroke's poetic inspiration is indifferent, but her 
friendship with men of letters left her the nearest English 
equivalent to a Margaret of Navarre, or a Vittoria Co- 
lonna. The great lady of the Renaissance could make her 
household a court, and rule over the affection of poets 
as her subjects.^ A new importance was attached to 
women which Fynes Moryson with patriotic intention 
described as prompted by motives of noble mind to give 
honour to weakness. ^"^ The growth of education and con- 
sequently of personality conduced to this result. Even 
the middle classes were responding more and more to such 
ideas. Mrs. Locke, the wife of a London shopkeeper, was 



I30 TUDOR IDEALS 

to become the confident of John Knox's most intimate 
thoughts. Stubbes could praise his own wife as seldom 
without the Bible or a good book in her hands." Could 
we penetrate through the anonymous zone of life we 
would find the women of the age increasingly alert to the 
need for cultivation. 



VI. THE SHUFFLING OF CLASSES 

Caste distinctions in the Middle Ages were never so 
rigidly observed as to completely arrest the transition 
from one class to another. But the feudal system and 
the social conditions resulting from this were little con- 
ducive to such penetration. Where it occurred, it was 
always sufficiently gradual not to upset the existing 
structure by any too sudden dilution, while those who 
rose beyond their origin, tended at once to assume the 
traits and prejudices of the class into which they were 
absorbed without altering its complexion. 

In England the continuance of feudal privilege no 
longer in relation to the needs of the community, had 
culminated in the civil wars of the Fifteenth Century. 
War is invariably succeeded by economic disturbances 
which arise from the readjustment of conditions. The 
novelty of those which took place in the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury, lay in the fact that as soon as the land was no longer 
held under feudal tenure, the principles of economic in- 
dividualism with their selfish reactions came into play. 
The weakening of the feudal nobility by the Wars of 
the Roses and their impoverishment had caused the dis- 
persion of many estates which were bought by enriched 
city merchants. This was no novelty ^ save on the scale 
with which it then took place. But while the feudal idea 
of the soil had been one which entailed military obliga- 
tions of service, the Tudor policy tended to break away 
from this. 

Economic laws assert themselves when not held in 
restraint by other circumstances, and as soon as land 
could be regarded solely for itself, the feeling that it 
was a marketable commodity induced the application 

131 



132 TUDOR IDEALS 

of more profitable methods of cultivation. This process 
from Henry VI Fs time went on through the Sixteenth 
Century in spite of many efforts made to prevent it. So 
late as the end of Elizabeth's reign, Francis Bacon could 
introduce a bill against enclosures and the conversion 
of arable land into pasture, and Leicester was accused 
of making parks and chases out of his tenants' lands.^ 
The immediate consequences of such agricultural changes 
were the wholesale evictions which took place and the 
impoverishment of the yeoman class. Latimer, him- 
self the son of a yeoman farmer, lamented their former 
prosperity, deploring the fact that since this decay 
they were no longer able as before to dower their daugh- 
ters and send their sons to the University.^ 

After the barons and the yeomen, who followed them 
in adversity, as once they had followed them in battle, 
the new order found a third victim. The monks had 
long been regarded with jealousy because of their vast 
wealth. "Nigh half the substance of the realm is in their 
possession."^ The charges of leading immoral lives 
and devouring the labour of the poor by their tithes,^ 
rested often on the flimsiest foundation, but the feeling 
aroused against them was an expression of the discon- 
tent of the time. 

The restless forces of the age which could ill account 
for the widespread poverty, fastened the blame for this 
on the friars. The fact that certain of these had enclosed 
their land and evicted their tenants lent fuel to this 
agitation. The monks were rich and unpopular. The 
two facts were associated and the king, greedy by na- 
ture, and quick to interpret popular feeling, saw in this 
the opportunity further to enrich himself and attach to 
the throne the courtiers and lawyers who with spoils 
derived from the friars would find their interests in- 
creasingly identified with the crown. 

The dissolution of the monasteries broke up stagnant 
pools of conservatism, inherited from earlier ages, but such 



THE SHUFFLING OF CLASSES 133 

measures added greatly to the social unrest. In the past, 
the monks had been the means of charitable assistance 
to the poor and with the confiscation of their foundations, 
the greatest agency of relief was stopped while the friars 
themselves became charges on the community. Men 
like Simon Fish and Brynklow, who had been foremost 
in denouncing them, ended by lamenting the spoliation 
of the church lands which had not turned out as they 
had hoped. 

One by one the ancient pillars of the medieval state 
had crumbled. Men whose lives and comforts seemed 
assured, were suddenly cast as beggars in the street 
looking in vain for an explanation of their downfall. A 
vast transformation was taking place in the social order. 
Deeper and more powerful than the authority of the 
crown which tried vainly to stem the tide while uncon- 
sciously lashing it, the entire medieval fabric of col- 
lective aggregates, internally connected by interest and 
obligation, was now giving way before the new individ- 
ualist conception of Renaissance life. 

Although the Tudor crown had itself been the first 
great triumph of individualism, as soon as it was firmly 
established, it sought to retard changes of which it had 
been the beneficiary but the significance of which it 
only dimly perceived. The progress of the transforma- 
tion, with its violent reactions, could not be stayed. 
It was only later in the century that the same forces who 
had benefited by the changes now sought to divert these 
into fresh channels of conservatism superficially reminis- 
cent of the ancient order. 

Destruction told only half the tale. Since the acces- 
sion of the Tudors, and even before, a new class of rich 
were stepping into the breaches made in the social struc- 
ture. The readjustment was taking place, less by design 
and intention, than by the effect of rude forces let loose 
in a disintegrated fabric where they were working out 
their own reactions. The sudden clash of vigorous new 



134 TUDOR IDEALS 

elements with a dying order, had been to throw the 
social system into the melting pot and leave the new 
alloys to the rough and uncontrolled workings of nat- 
ural laws. Below the crown, which was the first force 
to acquire stability, all other elements in the national life 
were in a semi-fluid state with vestiges of organization 
derived from former times but whose strength was no 
longer powerful enough to curb or to protect their mem- 
bers. 

The old structure had broken down, and its constituent 
parts were impoverished and humbled. Usually the 
class closest to the soil is the one which changes the 
least, but in England in the early Sixteenth Century, 
even this bedrock of the nation swayed. A contemp- 
orary wrote: 

"The poor man he was tossed 
I mean the labouring man 
I mean the husbandman 
I mean the ploughman 

All these men go to wrack 
That are the body and the stay 
Of your Grace's realm alway." ® 

The social disorder depicted by More, Sir William 
Forrest,^ and others was due to causes far deeper than 
the thinkers of the time could fathom. They could ill 
account for the sudden departure from the compara- 
tively static conditions of the Middle Ages. Impressed 
by the decay of what had been most stable, and by the 
prevalence of misery, two feelings were aroused. The 
first was one of indignation and resentment against 
those members of the community who had dared to 
profit by this disorder in order to rise. An unknown 
rhymester could write: 

"For they that of late did sup 
Out of an ashen cup 



THE SHUFFLING OF CLASSES 135 

Are wonderfully sprung up 
That nought were worth of late 

With casting counters and their pen 
These are the upstart gentlemen 
These are they that devour 
All the goods of the poor." ^ 

Amid the chaos of life which replaced what had 
formerly been an orderly structure, the newly rich ap- 
peared, "steplords" as Latimer dubs them, who treated 
land like merchandise and food as a commodity for 
speculation.^ Disorder and order' went side by side, 
but the disorder was due to the fall of the ancient feudal 
pyramid bringing down the destruction of the classes 
who had before been identified with the welfare of the 
state, while order was gradually being evolved by men 
who had trampled ruthlessly on whatever stood in their 
path. 

The rigidity of class structure was replaced by com- 
petition, and the diffusion of education increased this 
feeling of unrest by giving a sharper edge to class hatred. 
Those coming to the front by education and the acquisi- 
tion of wealth, had not had time to adjust their new pos- 
sessions to the national structure. The evolution then in 
process was too rapid for any apparent order to be ap- 
plied to movements which under the surface were quite 
as constructive as they were destructive. To many the 
superficial evidence seemed a sign of degeneracy. The 
early writers like Simon Fish inveighed against the use of 
money which they thought would have been better spent 
in charity, diverted toward the gratification of pleasure, 
and superfluous building taking the place of necessary 
lodging for laboring men.^'' The Puritans reviled extrav- 
agance, and even Harrison who usually saw only good 
everywhere thought that the spread of luxury was sap- 
ping the nation's manhood. The real economic transfer- 



136 TUDOR IDEALS 

mation going on passed almost unnoticed, and it was sup- 
posed that wealth was being drained from the land to pay 
for trifles. Luxury as proof of the superfluous permitted 
by the material enrichment of life, escaped their observa- 
tion. 

The growth of luxury came especially through the ex- 
tension of new commercial interests. The enormous 
increase of wealth aided the increase of extravagance. 
Everywhere new houses were being built of dimen- 
sions and beauty hitherto unknown. The poorest bar- 
on's house was better than that of the princes of old, 
wrote Harrison. The German, Hentzner, noted that 
even the farmers' beds were covered with tapestry. Costly 
furniture formerly used only by the great had descended 
to "inferior artificers" and many farmers now garnished 
their cupboards with plate, their beds with tapestry and 
silk hangings, and their tables with fine linen. "A mean 
man will have a house meet for a prince " wrote 
Starkey. . . . "Every gentleman wants to live as well 
as before lived only princes and lords."" 

The hatred of wealth is always most apparent when 
democratic conditions are near, and the significance of 
the levelling tendencies imposed by Tudor policy lay 
in the national preparation for democracy. The an- 
tecedents of this feeling can be traced to earlier days. 
The little known history of medieval socialism is full 
of levelling doctrines. Lydgate dwells on the churl's ha- 
tred of the gentleman and deplored the fact that beg- 
gars rose in station till they despised their neighbours,^^ 
while Occleve regretted the age when a lord could be 
told by his dress. 

Moralists are conservative by nature, for their sym- 
pathies attach themselves to the better side of a real 
or mythical past, and they are rarely able to project 
their imagination beyond the evil discerned in the present. 
The commonest form of criticism was the censure of 
those who aimed to rise above their station of life and 



THE SHUFFLING OF CLASSES 137 

most suggestions for reform lay in advocating a return to 
former conditions which were associated with the golden 
age. The wish for social betterment was denounced 
and blame cast on merchants who purchased land with 
their new wealth and tried to make ladies of their daugh- 
ters by marrying them to some noble ward in chancery. ^^ 

In his essay on the state, Edward VI with the conser- 
vatism of youth, commented on the changes and deplored 
the wish of the lower classes to rise. He wrote scorn- 
fully of the artificers who want to be county gentlemen 
and justices of the peace." His own goal was for stabil- 
ity and his anger expended itself against a tide he was 
powerless to stem. Political and religious causes further 
contributed to the social unrest and rendered more diffi- 
cult attempts to build afresh the foundations of order. 
After the persecution and exile of Catholics under Edward, 
with Mary came the persecution and exile of Protes- 
tants. In the words of a contemporary — gentlemen, 
knights, lords, countesses, duchesses, after the wreck of 
all their wealth fled as exiles abroad. Such convulsions 
were among the causes which kept open gaps in the 
social structure until filled by the infusion of new blood. 
An intermixture of class went on, side by side with the 
growth of new caste distinctions which were formed 
again on the ruins of the old. 

Paradoxically, the disentegration of rigid social lines 
provoked a deeper class feeling than any that had be- 
fore existed. The uncertainty of barriers, the exist- 
ence of a new twilight zone, undefined rights, the ex- 
tension of which varied according to the angle of vision, 
provoked an ill humour which simmered through the cen- 
tury. When Surrey, imbued with the feudal idea that 
the lives of the commoners were of indifferent interest, 
ruthlessly suppressed the prentices' rising against for- 
eigners in 1 517, he fortified the burgher's hatred of the 
nobility. 

It is among the difficulties of history that often the 



138 TUDOR IDEALS 

most widespread ideas have not found literary ex- 
pression. The feeling of hostility entertained by the lower 
classes was but little phrased. We consider more the 
religious side of Puritanism than its political, although 
the reason for Elizabeth's wish to suppress the Puritan 
pamphleteers may be contained in the remark attrib- 
uted to Lord Hertford, that "as they shoot at Bishops 
now so they will do at the nobility if they be suffered. " 
Later the "inbred malice in the vulgar against the no- 
bility" was among the reasons which made Burleigh 
so anxious for a peace with Spain. 

The same hatred and jealousy from above and below 
was directed against those who sought to rise above 
their station. Philip Stubbes, although a Puritan, re- 
sented the external confusion which made it so very hard 
to know who is a gentleman and who is not.^^ Ascham 
remarked on the desire of men to do what they were un- 
fit for, and the wish of some to be at Court who were bet- 
ter fitted to be teamsters. ^^ The critics so prone to de- 
nounce the ostentation of the new rich, did not realize 
that the latter were the unconscious heralds of economic 
individualism which replacing feudalism was henceforth 
to become the foundation of English industrial life. 

By preparing the moral freedom of the individual, the 
Sixteenth Century destroyed the former rigidity of class. 
Out of the counting house and the lawyer's study, came 
a new set of men who brought city life into relation with 
the entire community. The nomenclature of the old 
social fabric still went on as if nothing had changed, 
but its spirit was difi^erent. Henceforth in spite of 
the attempt at reaction under Elizabeth, and the growth 
of a new conservatism which arose while the turmoil of 
swift change subsided, there was never the same rigid 
caste line in England as in other European countries. 

The upward striving of all classes coming from this 
individualism, went on intensified by the fresh openings 
given to human activity. The husbandman, it was said. 



THE SHUFFLING OF CLASSES 139 

aimed to be a yeoman, the yeoman a gentleman, the 
gentleman a knight, the knight a lord.^^ The efforts to 
preserve class distinctions ended in a gradual struggle 
which was silently conducted. It finished in a kind of 
perpetual compromise characteristic of English life, 
which preserved the form of class distinction without 
narrowness, and allowed the free passage from one level 
to the other of whoever showed the necessary quali- 
fications. The movement was facilitated by the absence 
of other conscious standards on the part of those rising who 
were only too anxious to rid themselves of their ante- 
cedents and be merged without further ado into the 
class of their adoption. 

The old edifice was erected anew and its construc- 
tive material renovated till it acquired a strength and a 
resiliency which existed in no other country in Europe. 
While in England the individual was freed by gradual 
process from the relics of feudal restraint, the more 
rigid structure existing in France required the guil- 
lotine to accomplish the same result. Freedom of the in- 
dividual helped to lay the foundations for the economic 
prosperity on which the greatness of England was later 
to be built. 



VII. TRADITIONAL SURVIVALS 

There is always the tendency to restrict the evolution 
of history within a certain mental convenience and make 
the ideas of an age shape themselves to fit formulas. 
Especially before a watershed like the Renaissance it 
becomes disconcerting to have to reckon with currents 
which refuse to follow their expected course. One is 
easily disposed to accept at an exaggerated value the 
claims of a discoverer, that life has changed with the 
revelation of new ideas or that human nature alters 
with the fashion of its arts. 

The fact that the Renaissance substituted its own al- 
phabet for the Gothic did not mean that a fresh soul 
had filled mankind. Instincts and ambitions remain 
the same in all ages however differently expressed. 
In England, where novelty is never enthusiastically 
embraced, there was no sudden break with the past 
but a somewhat spasmodic transition. The new movement 
took a downward extensive direction. Side by side with 
it, at times blending, at others parallel, continued the 
traditions, derived from earlier centuries. Young ideas 
and old instincts together formed the essential unity of 
English life. In eras of swift change history is not un- 
like a mountain torrent whose waters foam when they 
dash against boulders, only to compose themselves after 
they have settled in the broad river bed. But the water, 
whether white with froth, or grey with melted snow, or 
blue in its deep calm, flows always in the same stream. 

Interwoven with the vast changes which came over 
English life during the reign of the Tudors, lingered in- 
numerable survivals of the past which in part were tra- 
ditional, in part instinctive reversions, in part even de- 
liberate archaisms linking Sixteenth Century England 

140 



TRADITIONAL SURVIVALS 141 

with all that had gone before. Political power had been 
able to hew for itself a new path, scholarship, and letters 
felt free to copy, emulate, or conceive their works in a 
newly borrowed dress. Everywhere a wider horizon ex- 
tended the human outlook, yet circumstances and con- 
ditions existed where the vision turned to the past in- 
stead of to the future, and where even a calculating 
policy intentionally tried to identify itself with what had 
gone before. 

Superficially at least the return of order under the 
Tudors and the growth of historical consciousness were 
conditions which made for a reversion to the old. The 
shaping of ideals and courtly practices tended to follow 
the medieval example. The Middle Ages were to the 
Renaissance what the Eighteenth Century has been to 
us, and only gradually the new era was able to form its 
own standards of distinction. Though as a political insti- 
tution feudalism was dead, there was a deliberate re- 
turn to many of its ideals. Long after the Middle Ages 
were over, ideas derived from these retained their in- 
fluence. Romances of chivalry became most popular 
when medieval chivalry existed no more, and the courtly 
practices before the eyes of those who sought to create 
a glamour for the age, were those of the Fourteenth 
Century. Amid such tendencies new life was given to 
the idea of knighthood and a deliberate attempt was 
made to formulate its duties. 

In England the Renaissance brought no sharp transition. 
No sudden break divided the two ages but only a gradual 
infiltration and extension of elements and fashions blend- 
ing into the old. Neither was the old completely dis- 
carded nor the new completely assumed. This was even 
truer in Scotland which as a more primitive land, pre- 
served traditions after these had become archaic in the 
southern kingdom. 

In a period of swift change it may become politic to 
link oneself to a venerable past rather than to inaugurate 



142 TUDOR IDEALS 

a more uncertain future. To discard the appearance as 
well as the spirit of whatever has gone before, is gratui- 
tously to increase the surfaces of friction and add to hu- 
man difficulties. The founder of the Tudor dynasty was 
himself to give the first example of this policy which con- 
sciously, or unconsciously, was followed by all who then 
established themselves upon the land. The silent pres- 
sure of environment contributed to hasten this result, 
and to efface initial differences. Though the structure of 
feudal privileges and duties had disappeared, the new 
class gradually merging with whatever remained of the 
old, instinctively tended to revert to the unwritten body 
of usages and practices, handed down from former days 
and which stood outside the field of direct legislation. 

In the great social transformation which then took 
place, the commonly accepted view has been derived 
partly from the study of many futile laws, partly from 
the writings of social reformers who, impressed by 
the misery of the thousands then rendered homeless, 
saw only evil effects. Great changes are like epidemics 
of disease which alarm by their ravages while the degree 
of immunity they gradually develop passes unobserved. 

A vast revolution with immediate reactions of suffer- 
ing had undoubtedly taken place. Isolated from all other 
circumstances, nothing could seem more convincing, or 
more completely a break from the past than the trans- 
ference of wealth from one class of the community to 
another disposed to use the land as a commercial enter- 
prise. Every student of the age has pointed this out and 
drawn the conclusions. Yet what was the result.^ Ir- 
respective of their antecedents or of the methods which 
secured for them their ill-gotten gains, this new class 
once settled on the land, found it advantageous to con- 
nect their life with that of an earlier tradition. Apart 
from their beginnings, or original intentions, the result 
was the same even when it took more than a generation 
to effect the change. The power of the unwritten body 



TRADITIONAL SURVIVALS 143 

of usages and customs handed down from former days, 
was greater than the power of the law or even the power 
of greed. Shylock became a country squire whose son 
could denounce usurers. Sir Thomas Kitson "mercer 
of London" built Hengrave Hall in Suffolk, one of the 
finest residences of the time. A new conservatism grew 
with a new propertied class, safely anchored on the 
land, aware of its new responsibilities, connecting itself 
with the system it had replaced, and even forging its 
pedigrees to identify itself with what had gone before. 

How far this desire to revert to former traditions 
could go, may be judged from the case of Sir Christo- 
pher Hatton, who had built a large house at Holdenby. 
He himself was in London and two years passed without 
his even visiting the place. Yet conforming to ancient 
practices of hospitality he gave orders that everyone, rich 
or poor, who passed there should receive entertainment. 

In this sense the new England of the Tudors grafted 
itself on the past, adopted it as its ancestry, and carried 
on its traditions. The castle became a manor, the Ab- 
bey a country house. Security reigned. The ancient 
turbulence disappeared, while sources of gain other than 
violence were tapped. For the first time England dis- 
covered the real enjoyment of life. But the essential 
structure of existence remained as a medieval inheritance. 
Though feudal charges and privilege disappeared, the 
prestige of the land survived from former times to attract 
the rich from the cities. By whatever road one travelled 
to success, the goal was always the country home sur- 
rounded by its acres of field and wood, and a respectful 
tenantry to give the homage of consideration to its 
owner. 

The Renaissance was not merely the discovery of 
the ancient world, it was also the discovery of a human 
consciousness which could pick its models where it chose 
and accordingly found many of these in medieval ex- 
ample. V^here hardly an act of chivalry stands out 



144 TUDOR IDEALS 

amid the dark annals of the Fifteenth Century, in Tudor 
times there came a revival of knightly practices. Caxton 
translating "The Order of Chivalry" from the French, 
lamented the disrepute into which knightly usages had 
then fallen. The old romances were no more read and 
many knights no longer possessed their armour. He 
wished to see the tourney revived and offered advice as 
to how this should be done.^ When he printed Malory's 
" King Arthur," he expressed the hope that his readers 
might learn therein noble acts of chivalry and gentle vir- 
tuous deeds. Many in the new age instinctively conscious 
of a ferment below, whose trend they could not understand, 
reverted to their own past with the wish to find in it a 
guide for conduct. 

The new movement disguised its own Renaissance 
origins for a past it had apparently discarded. The in- 
stitution of chivalry was revived to self-deceive another 
generation into believing that it represented continuity 
with an unbroken past. 

The tourney offered the brilliant side of this revival as 
a distraction which gave courtiers like Mountjoy the 
chance to distinguish themselves in their sovereigns' eyes, 
or for others to indulge their taste for the trappings of 
luxurious armour. There was also a revived code of 
knightly honour which in a contemporary form drew its 
inspiration from the example of earlier times. King 
James IV expressed the wish to fight Surrey for the 
possession of Berwick, just as later when Somerset in- 
vaded Scotland, Lord Huntley offered to fight the Eng- 
lish "for the whole quarrel, twenty to twenty, ten to ten, 
or else himself alone" with the English commander.^ 

Old survivals from former customs were blended into 
novel policies. New circumstances brought out a rever- 
sion to old practices. Instinctively man fell back on 
these to find the precedents for his action. Intellec- 
tually he might seek his inspiration from classical antiq- 
uity. This was in the main urban and peaceful, for 



TRADITIONAL SURVIVALS 145 

the Romans nurtured no warlike philosophy. To Eng- 
lishmen there was of necessity something bookish about 
the Ancient World. The Middle Ages with the cult of 
the horse and the lance, and the courtly reverence for 
woman, was closer to their taste. Even the travelled 
courtier and scholar like Sidney who tried to introduce 
classical meters into English, confessed his "own bar- 
barousness" and felt pride, in that he had never heard 
the old song of Percy and Douglas without being stirred 
to tears. 

The difficulty in understanding the age lies largely in the 
inability to separate the swirl of the currents amid the 
confusion of its eddies. Medievalism in the Sixteenth 
Century never became a consciously organized move- 
ment with an interior evolution, but occurred in the re- 
actions, deliberate and instinctive, toward earlier forms 
and practices of life. In part these came from the natural 
distaste of those who foresaw an excessive danger in 
individualism, and who wished to revert to the supposed 
stability of a past whose deficiencies were glossed over 
when not ignored. Such ideas took the form of a politi- 
cal reaction which hoped to find a rigid social structure 
in the state and saw with dismay any difi^erent order. 
Thomas More for instance, in a medieval spirit, put 
great limitations on personal liberty in Utopia where no 
one was allowed to wander beyond his own precinct 
without written permission of the prince and where 
punishment led at once to bondage. 

The traditions handed down by long habits of thought 
could not easily be shaken off and haunted the minds of 
those who tried to express new ideas without being able 
to discard the old. A writer like Starkey, in spite of his 
Renaissance cultivation, could not rid himself of the in- 
heritance of such ideas in criticising the evils of the time 
which he attributed to the lack of harmony within the 
state. "The temporality grudgeth against the spiritu- 
ality, the commons against the nobles and subjects against 



146 TUDOR IDEALS 

their rulers; one hath envy at another, one beareth 
maHce against another, one complaineth of another. "^ 

The moral nature of Englishmen turned back natu- 
rally toward their own medieval annals. The Renais- 
sance education was generally a veneer which only ex- 
ceptionally touched their inner soul. In another sense, 
the revival of medievalism in the Sixteenth Century 
marked the real triumph of the Renaissance. Where the 
Fifteenth Century concerned only with the struggle of 
the moment had forgotten its own origins, the discovery 
of man and his growing self-consciousness caused many by 
instinct to shape ideas toward their immediate antece- 
dents with which they tried to identify tastes and ideals. 
Different minds went back to former times in quest of 
different things. 

In the early years of the Sixteenth Century the exotic 
nature of the new poetry caused an instinctive fondness 
to linger for the medieval form which even in decay still 
seemed national. Certain poets trained in the old school 
could never accommodate their art to the new meters. 
Stephen Hawes although living at the court of Henry 
VIII was really a belated medievalist, for whom Plato 
was a famous clerk," and whose main interest in the 
classics came through reading into them an allegorical 
heralding of Christianity.^ Medieval didacticism was 
not easily shaken off. Its idea of life as a preparation 
for death, and of man haunted by sin, survived to dim 
the new light. Such a play as "Everyman" breathes 
the Middle Ages. An ethical bias was injected into 
letters and even translations were never published with- 
out an alleged lofty moral purpose. 

As was later the case with the French romantics certain 
poets were revolutionary in form but reactionary in their 
ideas, while others like Skelton were the contrary. In 
Scotland, where Gawain Douglas used his translation of 
Virgil to advance his belief in spiritual chivalry. Sir David 
Lyndsay remained as medievally didactic in intention as 



TRADITIONAL SURVIVALS 147 

he was progressive in his views. He spared neither " King, 
court, counselors, nobility, nor others of inferior estate," ^ 
in his wish to point out abuses. Using the form of a me- 
dieval satirist he interprets the Reformation and asks if 
the Pope's raising of armies is "fraternal charity" not 
certainly learned at Christ's school.^ If he were king, 
he wrote, not one penny should any longer be sent to 
Rome. All monasteries would be suppressed and their 
revenues appropriated by the state.'^ 

Lyndsay linked the Middle Ages and Renaissance in a 
strange confusion hardened with the cement of the Ref- 
ormation. In Scotland, the medieval spirit long pre- 
dominated. Henryson is enough of the Middle Ages 
to make Orpheus find Julius Ca?sar, Pilate, and Nero in 
Hades,^ and see in poetry no other purpose than that of 
moral allegory. Kennedy expounds the cloister doc- 
trine that the world is meant only to deceive and pride 
is the net with which to entangle mankind into sin.^ 

Henryson had believed that the popularity of Chaucer 
and Lydgate in preference to religious books was sin- 
ful.^" The Chaucerian revival in the Sixteenth Century 
offered the best proof of native taste reverting to the tra- 
ditions of the Middle Ages. The continual use of alle- 
gory came as a medieval inheritance. A soldier like 
Gascoigne imitates Piers Plowman, and his "Steel Glas" 
is as archaic in its form as in its wish to return to the 
feudal structure of society. He contrasted the old- 
fashioned steel mirror which stood for the plain man- 
ners of medieval England with the Venetian glass which 
typified the corruption of the day. He denounced the 
social unrest and the dissatisfaction which made every 
one seek to alter their condition though the only remedy 
he saw was one of reversion to the happy conditions sup- 
posedly prevailing in feudal life. Nothing is more signifi- 
cant of how dead was the knowledge of the Middle Ages 
than such literary return to its ideals which made Stephen 
Gosson deplore the decay of English virtue. 



148 TUDOR IDEALS 

Reminders of medievalism fringed life with a living 
force. Their fashion caused a literary hack like Ger- 
vase Markham to reedit the Book of St. Albans with its 
record of chivalry, and its enumeration of the articles of 
gentry. Once more these were catalogued for the bene- 
fit of readers desiring to learn the highroad to distinc- 
tion by setting before them models of deportment. 
Moral lessons were wrapped in the dress of a bygone age. 

The extension of life, the opening of new horizons for 
adventure, the security of England and the insecurity 
of the world, were as many conditions which made for 
the new knight errantry of Grenville and of Sidney. 
Spenser, most learned of poets, steeped in classical letters, 
yet felt that the ideal which touched him most deeply 
was that of the Middle Ages. His imagination reverted 
to an era, dead but with still living recollections, to 
find a setting for the new chivalry of his time. 

The ideal of knightly honour was closest to his heart. 
The Platonism of his hymns, and the classical learning 
garnered at the University, were outward trappings. The 
goal before his vision was one of arms and he tried to 
modernize the chivalry of the Middle Ages in order to 
reconcile it with the practices of the day. The pursuit of 
honour was to be grafted on to the new patriotic idea 
and to accompany the wish for cultivation. 

"Abroad in arms, at home in studious kind 
Who seeks with painful toil shall honour soonest find." 

In lines of unsurpassed beauty he has expressed this 
ideal of knightly honour; 

"In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell 

And will be found with peril and with pain 

Ne can the man that moulds in idle cell 

Unto her happy mansion attain; 

Before her gate high God did sweat ordain." 

. (F. Q. 11, 111, 40, sq.). 



TRADITIONAL SURVIVALS 149 

Spenser's medievalism was both deliberate and instinc- 
tive. In his mind he felt that he was going back to the 
hearthstone of national tradition and throwing off Greece 
and Rome for England. His complicated allegory has 
cast its shadow on a talent of which medievalism was 
only a single side. Intentional though this was, it 
showed the strain running through the national genius 
and around which ancient virtues in their modern dress 
could group themselves. The political not the moral 
and social aspects of the Middle Ages were dead — nor 
even their intellectual ideas. These had survived and 
entered into the permanent fibre of the race ready to 
show their vitality by being able to transform themselves 
to the needs of the age. 

Different minds went back to the Middle Ages in 
search of different things. The landowner, the reformer, 
the soldier, found in them their models. Instinctively 
they reverted to real or supposed precedents and called 
on these to modify the pressure from the currents of 
other ideas. The result was an extraordinary medley 
of old and new, sometimes associated, sometimes in op- 
position, yet almost always conveying the feeling of dis- 
harmony and compromise which is characteristic of the 
Sixteenth Century in England. The age was neither 
wholly medieval nor wholly Renaissance, but the reac- 
tions between both caused the birth of its genius. 

Reminders of feudalism could still be seen in Ireland 
where the chief of a sept rode, while a gentleman of his 
own name, able to speak good Latin, ran barefooted by 
his stirrup. Englishmen, astonished by this sight, thought 
they had passed into another era without realizing that 
the spirit of the Middle Ages breathed in themselves. 



VIII. THE SOCIAL FABRIC 

Phillipe de Comines found a divine justice in the 
fact that the English nobles whose ancestors had pil- 
laged and devastated France should have finished by 
killing each other/ The destruction of the feudal nobility 
in the Wars of the Roses has, however, been exaggerated. 
The heads of great families perished, but there were 
many who survived. Of more importance than actual 
statistics was the fact that the baronage had been so 
weakened by death and impoverishment, as no longer 
to be able to oppose successfully the growth of new ele- 
ments in the state. The power of turbulent nobles was 
ended and they were henceforth to be dominated by the 
crown. No longer able to present a unity bound to- 
gether by interests of class and blood, their relative im- 
portance was to decay. 

The Duke of Buckingham had daily entertained five 
hundred retainers at his board. When he mounted the 
scaffold, it was thought that the last of the great nobles 
had died. But even he possessed only the outward trap- 
pings of his station without the power to save even his 
innocence from an unjust death. The history of the no- 
bles in the Sixteenth Century is misleading, for on the 
surface little had changed except the infusion of new blood. 
So late as the middle of the century many households 
still kept their trains of worthless hangers-on.^ 

The Duke of Norfolk in Elizabeth's reign could 
boast that his revenues were hardly less than those of 
the Kingdom of Scotland, and that when on his tennis 
court at Norwich he felt the equal of kings.^ The Fif- 
teenth Century was not so far away nor the hotbed of 
conspiracy in Rome, or Madrid so distant, as to remove 
the hope of independent action on the part of some 

ISO 



THE SOCIAL FABRIC 151 

nobles. This betrayed itself in many an intrigue and 
awakened ambition. Old ideas are deep-rooted even 
after they have lost their force. The medieval theory 
of the prince as a kind of superior noble who derived 
his strength from the nobility, was not unconnected with 
the plan to marry Leicester to the queen. Elizabeth, 
scenting this danger, lent countenance to the belief that 
royalty was a blood apart and declared that she was not 
so unmindful of her Majesty as to prefer her servant.^ 
Such ideas did not fit into the Tudor theory. Their 
own origin was too recent and their succession too inse- 
cure, to take risks from those who by their pretensions 
could approach the throne. 

The theory of government could not conceive of any 
structure other than that of the pyramid with its crowned 
apex. Tudor policy was to destroy the power of the no- 
bility and then reconstruct it on another basis. The 
idea of an aristocracy remained unchanged, but its po- 
litical power became absorbed by the throne. 

The crown encouraged such a structure because tend- 
ing to make easier the task of government. Henry VII 
copying the French practice where titles of nobility 
were sold, insisted that every freeholder with a land 
rental of forty pounds should receive knighthood and 
pay fees for the same.^ This order was so often repeated 
that frequent attempts must have been made to evade it. 
The king tried artificially to sustain an aristocratic 
fabric by enforcing primogeniture, and, later, Thomas 
Cromwell enacted a bill to punish attempts to circum- 
vent this. It was argued that Englishmen, who were 
rough by nature, required a ruling class preserved for 
them by the laws of inheritance, for if great estates were 
divided, decay would then set in and the nobility be 
levelled to the commons.^ Moreover there was real pride 
in the fact that the English nobility had preserved their 
territorial foundation, and contemporary opinion con- 
trasted it in this respect to the disadvantage of the French. 



152 TUDOR IDEALS 

A new titled class was formed mostly from men 
of small beginnings. Humanity in its class lines follows 
a simple evolution, and the much reviled new nobility 
quickly enough assimilated a caste tradition without the 
dangerous feudal grip. As soon as a territorial founda- 
tion from the plunder of the monasteries had been 
given to these novel creations, a class was manufac- 
tured which, save for the spirit of feudal militarism, 
was to resemble the ancient nobility. Where descent 
was wanting, genealogies were invented and the mercer 
great-grandfather of Anne Boleyn could be represented 
as being of noble Norman blood, just as later Cecil, 
who was of obscure origin, found genealogists ready 
enough to give him an ancient lineage. 

Historians as a rule take insufficient cognizance of 
the fact that blood plays less part in creating a type than 
does environment and the maintenance of tradition as the 
framework of conduct. Evolution affects character just 
as it does every other manifestation of life. The tradi- 
tion of a peerage existed in England and though with- 
out leaders, reduced in numbers, and impoverished, it 
was revived and in the end strengthened by the very peo- 
ple it most despised. The survivors of the old nobility 
who scoffed at the newcomers failed to realize that they 
were to be saved by these and that the vigor again given 
to the aristocracy was due to this infusion in what was 
henceforth to become a class and not a caste. 

The feeling of security in Elizabeth's reign and the 
growth of wealth made for conservative reaction. The 
pressure from below aroused a social resistance above 
which was encouraged by the crown. The latter no 
longer dreading the political encroachments of the great 
now looked to these to help resist the encroachments 
of the small. Hence Bacon as a defender of the exist- 
ing order, admits that though in other ages noblemen 
had been greater, yet that their rights and dignities had 
never been better preserved than under Queen Eliz- 



THE SOCIAL FABRIC 153 

abeth who gave them privileges and precedence in Par- 
liament, court and country/ 

The aristocratic idea became fortified amid the evolu- 
tion of conditions different from those for which it had 
originally been intended. The diffusion of wealth and of 
education produced a far greater upward striving with 
a corresponding desire for the ornamental sides of life. 
The asumption of arms, with or without authority, was 
one manifestation of this.^ Amid the disentegration of 
classes, there was a notable attempt on the part of many 
of humble origin to claim heraldic privilege and to parade 
as gentry. The abuse of titles was regarded as a plague 
infesting the world.® The very College of Heralds was 
accused of forging pedigrees, and when early in the next 
century the common hangman, Gregory Brandon, was 
granted the right to bear arms the scandal became noto- 
rious. 

Apart from the ludicrous side of such practices, the 
fact remained that the growth of the nation in population, 
wealth, and influence, brought to the fore new sources 
of honour which required adjustment to the more primi- 
tive structure. The essence of desire for aristocratic dis- 
tinction was unchanged, but its practice conformed better 
to the necessities of life. Contemporary writers would 
discuss learnedly about the "slothful tolerance" which 
allowed those sons of churls who had received an academic 
degree to bear arms,^° and could sneer at gentlemen being 
made "good cheap" in England. The public regarded 
as gentlemen, whoever lived without manual labour, 
and even the critics had to acknowledge that the system 
possessed its merits, for the prince lost nothing by it, 
while the new gentry was required to display a "more 
manly courage and tokens of better education, higher 
stomach and bountifuller liberality. "^^ The extension 
of such standards to the professions is also significant. 
Lawyers were never behindhand in exalting the study 
of the law. There was more doubt about doctors, yet 



154 TUDOR IDEALS 

soon medicine became more highly esteemed than before, 
and writers argued that its knowledge merited the bear- 
ing of arms. Those who excelled in poetry and in music 
were also thought to deserve coat armour.^- 

The curious use of armourial bearings as a kind of cur- 
rency of gentry, was the result of having to find some 
recognized pattern of distinction for the growing numbers 
of men who, no longer attached to the soil, or possessed 
of landed estates, were now to be found in every walk of 
Hfe. 

The social effect of the Sixteenth Century had been to 
increase enormously the number of those who without 
direct root or property connection demanded the consid- 
eration of gentle birth. In this sense all soldiers of fortune 
claimed to be gentlemen, while members of more primitive 
communities likewise arrogated the title. Spenser re- 
marked that the designation of gentlemen in Ireland was 
as universal as with the Welsh and resulted in making the 
Irish scorn work and manual labour. ^^ 

The underlying idea of social distinctions was to at- 
tempt to adjust the fluctuating and expanding con- 
ditions of English life to a primitive structure derived 
from the Middle Ages. The traditional basis of military 
origin was preserved. Arms made the gentleman, and a 
soldier however basely born was so considered if he lived 
without reproach. ^^ 

The efforts of the crown were directed to preserving a 
rough balance between ideas old and new. The fount of 
honour could conceive of no other fabric of society than 
that of an orderly, ascending progression attended by 
honorific distinctions. Its repressive task had ceased as 
soon as it no longer feared the menace to its power and 
henceforth its policy with respect to class distinctions 
became conservative. 

Both as a source of revenue and in the interest of sta- 
bility the crown aided the movement to regularize the 
social structure and distributed the outward trappings 



THE SOCIAL FABRIC 155 

which have come down to our own day with but little 
change. By so doing it responded to the ideas of the 
nation, who would have little understood any other plan. 
The prevailing opinion was deeply aristocratic, and sharp 
lines both of theory and of practice were drawn between 
the social strata. The influence of the upper classes was 
still immense and the belief existed, that in peace as in war, 
the nobility were to act as the nation's leaders and by 
their example make their rule welcome. ^^ The people 
will follow them "for truly such as the noblemen be such 
will the people be. "^^ Many tried therefore to impress on 
the upper classes the feeling of their responsibility. As- 
cham declared that they were the "makers and marrers 
of all men's manners within the realm. "^'' 

The social fabric had to take cognizance of a more com- 
plex situation than before and its groupings followed 
broader lines. "The noble name of Knight may compre- 
hend both Duke, Earl, Lord, Knight, squire, yea every gen- 
tleman and every gentle born," wrote Gascoigne.^^ Indi- 
vidualism brought by the Renaissance met in opposition to 
the old conventional structure but refused to demean itself, 
and the attempt to create further distinctions at court be- 
tween nobles and gentry resulted in failure. When Lord 
Oxford insulted Philip Sidney at the tennis court before the 
French envoy, the latter challenged him to a duel. The 
queen always ready to support caste distinctions (as 
when she rebuked Sir Thomas Copley for describing him- 
self in a letter written in Latin to the King of Spain as 
"nobilis Anglus,"^^) expostulated with Sidney on the 
difference between earls and gentlemen, remarking that 
the latter's disregard of the nobility taught the peasant 
to insult both. Sidney retorted that the difference in 
degree between gentlemen only affected their precedence 
and cited Henry VIII who had protected the gentry 
against the oppression of the great. 

Amid confused tendencies there existed a veritable bor- 
derland between old and new where the vigorous remains 



156 TUDOR IDEALS 

of old prejudices fought novel ideas. Sidney himself 
whose father had suffered because of inferiority in his 
degrees of heraldry accounted it his "chiefest honour to 
be a Dudley" and defended his uncle Leicester against 
scurrilous attacks which accused him of every crime, 
by dwelling on the antiquity of his lineage although this 
was disputed by Sussex who dubbed Leicester an upstart 
with only two ancestors both of whom had been traitors. 

The second half of the Sixteenth Century in England 
marked a distinct conservative reaction over the disorder 
of the first half. The flood gates which had then been 
open were now closed once more and no longer conduced 
to those sudden and abrupt changes whjch raised fortune's 
favourites to the highest eminence. The growth and dif- 
fusion of wealth and education had become more gradual. 
After the wholesale expropriations, a new landed conser- 
vatism was built afresh which has continued until our 
own day. The social structure tended increasingly to 
shape itself into a kind of boundary wall high, yet by no 
means inaccessible, which encompassed private life. It 
remained a citadel of prestige rather than of power. The 
transitions between classes were no longer sharp in their 
suddenness but sloughed into gradual lines of demarcation. 

Especially significant was the rise of a wealthy middle 
class who remained in the towns. The letter writer 
Chamberlain was of this type, and became an ancestor of 
the man about town, cultivated and witty, who in the 
Eighteenth Century frequented cofi^ee houses. Indepen- 
dent in his own position he had little wish to rise or to de- 
mean himself by homage to the great. Writing to a friend 
who asked him to call on a peer he said, "Howsoever 
well they use me, yet methinks still I am not of mine 
element when I am among Lords, and I am of Rabelais' 
mind that they look big comme un Milord d'Angleterre." ^^ 



IX. THE THEORY OF ARISTOCRACY 

Characteristic of the Renaissance desire to obtain 
deeper insight into life were the theories devised to ex- 
plain every sphere of human activity. 

Among the principal questions discussed was the in- 
tellectual justification for aristocracy. It had puzzled 
the Greeks and occupied the Italians, and more than 
ever amid the shifting currents of the age it came up 
before English minds. In practice the Tudors had wel- 
comed ability from whatever level it rose. The appar- 
ent haphazardness of such a system disturbed scholars 
who, trained amid less practical standards of judgment, 
thought themselves philosophers because they read Aris- 
totle. Their ideas carried little weight with those in 
power but they are of interest by their wish to associate 
authority with virtue, and create a real as well as an 
etymological analogy. The identification of nobility with 
spiritual qualities so often expressed in the Renaissance 
was a return to the moral standards of antiquity. 

Aristotle's maxim that virtue and riches are the origin 
of nobility had been the starting point for all medieval 
writers, who did not attempt to harmonize the feudal 
practice around them with the ideal structure of their 
ideas. Chaucer quoted Dante in his "Wife of Bath," 
that whereas ancestors can bequeath possessions, with- 
out virtuous living "even a Duke or an Earl is but a 
churl. "^ Opinion in this was consistent. The " Romaunt 
of the Rose" said that no one is gentle by his lineage alone 
but whoso that is virtuous. Without gentle birth one 
may still be a gentleman, by acting as one.^ 

The Scottish poets like Gawain Douglas and Flenryson 
whose culture was medieval, also gave prominence to 

IS7 



158 TUDOR IDEALS 

virtue as the essence of nobility.^ The notorious Dudley, 
in his "Tree of Commonwealth" placed nobility on a 
pinnacle of virtue that has never been surpassed.^ Even 
so original a thinker as More had nothing new to say 
on this subject. In his life of Pico della Mirandola he 
repeats the commonplaces about nobility of ancestors 
conferring none on their descendants, those who decline 
from the standard set being all the more reprehensible. 
Amid much Sixteenth Century writing on this subject 
most authors merely reiterate the current platitudes of 
their predecessors. 

In his CortegianOy Castiglione^ had discerned many 
practical reasons for approaching this question from an- 
other side and with the realism of his nation took into 
account popular prejudices. The same was true of the 
Portuguese humanist Osorius, whose work on nobility 
was also translated into English. After stating that there 
was no apparent reason why noble blood should have 
preference, since it signified neither greater courage, 
virtue, nor ability, he remarked that nobility might 
seem vain, if one did not examine the structure of nature 
and realize that there is no real equality. Certain traits 
predominate in every nation and stock, and it was 
natural for those descended of a noble line to preserve 
virtues which brought glory to their house. The essence 
of nobility is nothing else than this spark grafted in some 
family of renown. In spite of the seeming injustice of 
government by a few, in the end it worked to the state's 
advantage.® 

"From God only proceedeth all honour," wrote Sir 
Thomas Elyot, perhaps the first Englishman to bestow 
serious attention on this subject.^ He advanced a fan- 
tastic theory about the origin of nobility. In the begin- 
ning when all things were equal and shared in common, 
property and dignity had been allotted by mutual consent 
to the meritorious. Like so many others, he analyzed 
the essence of nobility to find it partly in lineage. Where 



THE THEORY OF ARISTOCRACY 159 

virtue is joined to great possessions or dignities, nobil- 
ity is most evident, and he repeats the old image of it 
being like an ancient robe, which worn by each succes- 
sive owner required continual repair. Nobility was also 
the external praise and honour by which certain actions 
were surrounded rather than the actions in themselves. 
He was not so sure whether virtue is the deed or the hon- 
our attached to it. Like Montesquieu, he realized that 
honour was the vital principle of an aristocracy, and 
Elyot's avowed purpose was to strengthen this element 
in the state. The intention of his writing was to pre- 
pare a future governing class selecting them preferably 
from the upper classes, both because they were less 
subject to corruption on account of their wealth, and 
because virtue in a gentleman is commonly coupled 
with courtesy and mildness. The three qualities he re- 
marked, inherent in the gentleman were affability, placa- 
bility, and mercy which is the greatest of them all. 

Among Elyot's contemporaries several concerned them- 
selves with this subject. Bishop Fisher tries to analyze 
nobility into its different origins of blood, manners, na- 
ture, and marriage.^ Bishop Poynet, with more daring, 
discerned nobility in tyrannicide and deeds actuated by 
patriotism.^ Among the popular writers, Crowley after 
expressing the opinion that the gentleman had been ap- 
pointed by God to rule the common people, stated a 
grievance of the time in remarking that he should try 
not to have deer parks. ^° 

It is useless to repeat the hackneyed ideas of writers 
like Lawrence Humphrey and Ascham. The latter 
so vigorous in relating personal impressions, had little 
new to say in developing a theory which he borrowed 
mainly from the ancients. ^^ Another writer, Blundevile, 
repeats as an old saying the maxim that the Prince may 
make a nobleman but not a gentleman. ^^ A swarm of 
writers in the latter years of the century found little to 
add to the fact that virtuous qualities pertained to the 



i6o TUDOR IDEALS 

gentleman ^^ and any derogation from these caused a lapse 
in nobility. 

Some reverted frankly to the Middle Ages for the pedi- 
gree of their ideas. Gervase Markham, refashioning Dame 
Juliana Berners, discovers the essence of caste in the 
angelic hierarchy and the origin of churls in Cain's action, 
while Christ was an "absolute gentleman" entitled by 
Mary to wear coat armour.^* Amid much nonsense a 
definite ideal of the gentleman was then created. "Who- 
soever wrongeth in any sort the meanest that is, cannot 
in any equity merit the name of gentleman" wrote 
Geoffrey Fenton ^^ with words which still deserve quota- 
tion. 

Neither Leigh, Feme, nor Bossewell, all of whom dis- 
cussed the question, have anything new to say. The latter 
expressed a current Renaissance view, though hardly the 
historical one, when he says that arms were first given to 
those who achieved excellence in anything "some for their 
studies, some by feats of arms, some for their great posses- 
sions or long continuance of their blood. "^^ Learning and 
arms are at the basis of nobility " and in my poor conceit 
hardly deserveth he any title of honour or gentility that 
doth not take pleasure in the one or the other. " So wrote 
Segar ^"^ who lamented the overfondness of most English 
gentlemen for sport and pleasure. By war many men of 
low degree have attained great dignity and fame, for the 
profession of arms is "the very source, mother, and 
foundation of nobility. "^^ 

Later writers like Peacham confirm such opinions, 
while others like H. Baldwin and Ludowick Bryskett ap- 
proached the subject from the moral side only to reach 
similar conclusions.^^ 

With ideas borrowed from Aristotle and percolating 
through Italian and French sources, all tried to create 
an ideal automaton of virtues which they could dub the 
pattern of a gentleman. The conclusion reached was in 
the nature of a compromise between the theoretical 



THE THEORY OF ARISTOCRACY i6i 

sides of excellence derived from blood as in the opinion 
of the vulgar, or by virtue which was that of philos- 
ophers. 

The limitations in an age's ideals can rarely be charged 
to any one nation. It was the merit of Sixteenth Century 
England to have borrowed freely from the ideas which 
were then the common fund of European civilization, 
though the influence of foreign writers is at times diffi- 
cult to detect. Certainly the Renaissance theory inclined 
toward a natural aristocracy open to talent which con- 
cerned itself little with abstract ideas either of virtue or 
of lineage. The whimsical fancies of a Cornelius Agrippa 
asserted that the commons take their beginning in Abel, 
the nobles in Cain, and proved with more historical method 
that no kingdom in the world but began with murder, 
cruelty, and slaughter as the first arts of nobility. If one 
could not obtain nobility through murder (in war) he ad- 
vised its purchase with money and if this is impossible 
let the applicant be a royal parasite, or marry a discarded 
mistress or illegitimate child of a prince.^° The diversity 
of ideas born in different nations helped to form that 
strange hodgepodge of culture in which the Elizabethans 
flourished. Culled from every direction, all traced their 
origin back to antiquity, and all, as they passed through 
different skeins, were reunited in the genius of Eliza- 
bethan poetry. 

The literary men of the age had little to add to the stock 
beliefs. Some with deep religious feeling like Bishop Bale 
found the perfection of nobility in true faith, others re- 
peated the ancient commonplaces. Gascoigne could re- 
iterate 

" The greater birth the greater glory sure 
If deeds maintain their ancestors' degree." 

(Steel Glas, p. 75) 

and a poetaster like Barnaby Googe reverted to the old 
adage: 



i62 TUDOR IDEALS 

"If their natures gentle be 
Though birth be never so base 
Of gentlemen (for mete it is) 
They ought have name and place." 

(3d Eclogue.) 

Spenser trying in vain to revive the dead chivalry had 
sufficient penetration to realize the futility of his efforts. 
In spite of his own middle class birth he wished to exalt 
the excellence of blood which reveals itself no matter how 
deformed. He commends those who seek by right de- 
serts, to attain the true type of nobility and do not call 
on vain titles obtained from distant ancestors. Yet with 
all his reverence for waning traditions he was conscious of 
how remote was the practice of nobility from its theory.^^ 

In "All's Well That Ends Well" the king in seeking 
to induce the Count of Roussillon to marry the poor 
physician's daughter comments on the original identity 
of blood and of how dignities without virtue are but 
"dropsical honour." Lyly with his predilections for the 
court yet takes no different view. Though gentle ac- 
tions bespeak gentle blood,^^ it is virtue and not the 
descent of birth but of conditions that makes gentle- 
men. ^^ While high position requires high virtue, no 
writer brought out more emphatically than Lyly the moral 
aspects of dignities in the state even if most of his ideas 
are derived from Plutarch. He helped to discover the 
"gentleman" to the Elizabethan world. It was no longer 
the nobleman or knight of whom he spoke nor even the 
"freeman" as Sidney called himself. With Lyly we have 
the modern designation of the word. Though the associ- 
ation between position and virtue did not always corre- 
spond, the ideal he held was high. 



X. THE PREPARATION FOR LIFE 

The conventional labelling of periods in history is apt 
to mislead by the suggestion of abrupt change. Tradi- 
tions of ignorance inherited from the Middle Ages, long 
survived the supposed advent of an age of enlighten- 
ment. Side by side with the new, and interwoven with 
it in every proportion, ran old ideas to carry on the 
continuity of British life. 

The habits of intellectual sloth had become so ingrained 
that the significance of the new secular revelation passed 
almost unnoticed during its early stages, as something 
which concerned only scholars. The diffusion of Re- 
naissance culture was destined to suffer in England be- 
cause of this association. Instead of being accepted on 
its merits, as a channel of civilization, the fact that it 
was mainly sponsored by men who diverted it to theo- 
logical studies made it seem of indifferent interest save to 
an elect few. 

The ignorance of many of the upper classes continued 
as before to disgrace the country. The historian of Henry 
VIII has remarked that of the three greatest noblemen of 
that reign the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Suffolk, 
and the Marquis of Dorset, it would be hard to say who 
was the most illiterate.^ In spite of the example set by 
the royal family, the importance of education was not 
widely appreciated. So late as the reign of Edward VI, 
there were peers who could not write their own names, 
and Roger Ascham alluded with sadness to the many 
ashamed to be thought learned.^ Even much later, in- 
sufficient attention was given to children's education,^ 
and the poor instruction of English youth became no- 
torious abroad. Leicester, who judged as a man of the 
world, complained of their tendency to brawl among 

163 



i64 TUDOR IDEALS 

themselves, and wrote that " the cockney kind of bringing 
up at this day of young men" would later be regretted.'* 

Fortunately a different picture can as well be drawn, 
and in this contrast between boorish ignorance and the 
most gifted cultivation lay an extraordinary feature of the 
time. The new ideas spread through circles which wi- 
dened as they descended. Naunton writing of Eliza- 
beth's youth could say that "letters about this time 
and somewhat before began to be of esteem and in fashion.^ 
Until this process of dilution produced a superficial level, 
the anomaly existed of crass ignorance, and brilliant cul- 
tivation, with many intermediate blends, all going to 
form a society ill fused in its culture and in its sympa- 
thies. The confused expression which marked the first 
half of the Sixteenth Century in England was due in no 
small measure to the clash of ideas emanating from the 
neighbourhood of such differently trained elements. 

North of the Alps a certain medieval crabbedness sur- 
vived which caused studies to be judged not on their 
merits but because of moral qualities.^ Englishmen, 
unlike the great Italians of the Renaissance, did not 
give themselves over to the pure cultivation of the mind 
nor consciously tried to shape themselves as perfect 
all around men. The British ideal was at once more 
practical and more deeply tinged with religious feeling 
emanating from a clerical origin, which had never been 
completely secularized and remained a little in awe lest 
classical studies should detract from the moral element 
at the basis of education. 

The goal in view aimed to prepare men for practical 
life rather than as scholars. At its best it created a well- 
rounded type of man who after receiving the impress of 
classical culture in his youth, was never able, altogether, 
to forget this. Other circumstances brought out the age's 
brilliancy. Music was a common accomplishment and 
the writing of verse a courtly tradition. These two gifts 
combined with the taste for arms, and a service which 



THE PREPARATION FOR LIFE 165 

comported public duties, produced a type of unusual at- 
tainments whose gifts partly natural, partly developed, 
came through other circumstances than the conscious de- 
sire for perfection. To this extent individualism in Eng- 
land was a less artificial phenemenon than in Italy. Per- 
haps the existence of a great national ideal larger than 
any personality, restrained Englishmen within a more 
modest and yet more useful sphere. 

An educational method was elaborated almost from the 
cradle. The elemental requirement of all Renaissance in- 
struction was a thorough classical training. Children were 
to be taught to speak pure Latin before they were seven, 
at which age they were expected to begin Greek. and music. 
Sir Thomas Elyot in advocating these ideas was not ex- 
ceptional. William Kempe urged that serious instruction 
should begin at five, when the boy's mind was to be 
trained to eloquence by his tutor. He was to study Eng- 
lish grammar and devote his spare time to reading until 
he was seven. After that the scheme of education pro- 
posed Latin conversation and composition, and later 
Greek and Hebrew until the age of twelve when the higher 
education of rhetoric and logic might begin.'' At sixteen 
the boy should be ready for service to his country. Pic- 
colomini's "Moral Institution" which was widely read 
in England portrayed the perfect child, and outlined for 
him a scheme of education, which at fourteen expected 
a boy to be proficient in music, poetry, and drawing. 

Great attention was also given to sport which fitted in 
with the former knightly type of education. Italian wri- 
ters had dwelt on such training as forming the balance 
between mind and body, and Englishmen welcomed this 
side of training. It was proper for gentlemen to take 
pleasure in such exercises, ride well, run fair at the tilt, 
play at all weapons, and scholars were urged to maintain 
their health of body.^ 

The numerous educational treatises of the age Invariably 
impress one by the high pressure of instruction. The tend- 



i66 - TUDOR IDEALS 

ency was to hasten the preparation of youth and to make 
Hfe begin earlier. Wolsey had been a bachelor of arts at 
fifteen, Sidney at fourteen went to Oxford. The rapid 
changes of the time, and its lack of orderly progression, 
caused youth to be brought into earlier contact with life 
and preparation to be correspondingly anticipated. The 
methods of approaching life were overcharged without 
due recognition of what was to follow. 

Beyond the study of the classics and the training in 
weapons, there was little agreement of purpose. A few 
far seeing minds were painfully conscious of the incom- 
pleteness of the system which stopped short at the very 
threshold of life. Educational plans were a favourite pas- 
time and the attempt was at times made in these to try 
to catch up with the rapid progress of national evolu- 
tion. The most interesting of all was Humphrey Gilbert's 
plan of an academy to fit scholars for action where those 
not interested in the dead tongues could learn the modern. 
Appreciating the wide gulf which existed between theory 
and life, he formulated an educational ideal to prepare 
youth in the widest sense for national service. Differing 
from Oxford and Cambridge where only learning was 
sought, they were to study "matters of action meet for 
present practices both of peace and war. "^ The purpose 
of the institution was to offer a suitable practical education 
to men of family, "and then younger brothers may eat 
grass if they cannot achieve to excel. " The programme 
of studies embraced civil government and finances, martial 
exercises, navigation, and surgery. This was the real 
humanist ideal applied to Hfe with its vision of a new 
England venturing into distant lands. Gilbert had real- 
ized the promise of what the colonies were to mean for 
British expansion, but his suggestion met with no re- 
sponse from the most parsimonious of rulers. 

The theoretical basis of the Renaissance preparation 
for life was essentially aristocratic. The educational ideal 
did not concern itself with the leavening of the masses 



THE PREPARATION FOR LIFE 167 

but with the cultivation of the few. Its preparation 
bore in mind high station in Hfe and nearly always the 
service of the state as an ultimate goal. To this extent it 
is unfortunate that it took so little cognizance of the 
real genius of the age. The wells of national energy were 
often sunk lower beneath its notice, and affected levels 
that educators did not attempt to reach. 



XL THE ART OF WAR 

The practice of warfare which developed out of the 
feudal system was not conducive to enterprises of pro- 
tracted scope. The medieval structure had been adapted 
to a somewhat primitive society and was suited to easy 
territorial mobilization which enlisted personal incentive 
so long as conquest offered the hope of booty. Eng- 
lishmen learned to their cost, that it was less efficacious 
in fighting a protracted defensive war in France, yet no 
far-reaching plan of collective effort replaced the feudal 
idea. The Tudor crown which had been strong enough 
to destroy the feudal power, was unprepared to substi- 
tute itself on a large scale in making any direct claim on 
its subjects' service in war. Its early efforts tended to 
rely for normal exigencies on elements that it could al- 
ways control. Henry VII's creation of a bodyguard in 
which he followed continental example was due to this 
idea. Foreign mercenaries were popular because better 
disciplined than the English and more directly respon- 
sive to the crown. 

The use of mercenaries as an institution had first been 
developed in Renaissance Italy where the transformation 
of war was toward a professional art requiring a high degree 
of skill, and more intellectual than physical virtues. In 
England the exploits of Martin Swart's "merrie men" 
left an enduring impression of what military discipline 
could accomplish with only slight resources. But two 
circumstances deterred the English crown from pur- 
suing any consistent military policy. The absence of 
any real national foreign danger until toward the end of 
the Sixteenth Century, and the growing current of individ- 
ualism, were not conducive to such preparation. In ad- 
dition the recollection of former victories in France acted 

i68 



THE ART OF WAR 169 

detrimentally. Men with pride in their traditions are 
loath to cast aside what has made their success, and the 
memory of how the long bow had won Crecy and Poitiers 
caused England to lag far behind the Continent in the art 
of war. 

The crown with broader vision occasionally tried to 
remedy the spirit of national self-sufficiency, which had 
resulted in such humiliating disasters as the first expedi- 
tion to Spain. Henry VIII welcomed Italian military 
captains and engineers who brought with them a new 
knowledge of tactics, of ordnance, and of fortifications, 
hardly known north of the Alps. Later under Protector 
Somerset, the successes obtained over the Scotch at 
Pinkie came from the superior discipline of Italian, 
Spanish, and Albanian mercenaries. The employment of 
foreigners was, however, a temporary expedient resorted 
to by the government and dropped as soon as the emer- 
gency had passed. The nation's interest in military prep- 
aration was desultory and spasmodic. Later Queen 
Elizabeth was greatly blamed for the avaricious short- 
sightedness which caused her to neglect the national 
defences. Leicester at Tilbury was a commander with- 
out an army, while English powder magazines remained 
empty. 

The test of military policy came In placing the coun- 
try in a state of preparedness. The defence of the realm 
by the entire nation was always an ideal held in mind,^ but 
it was one which was never lived up to. From time to 
time enrolments took place ^ but there was little con- 
tinuity of policy, or clear-sighted idea of what was neces- 
sary. 

Archery was encouraged as the traditional English 
weapon and the bow was regarded as "the defence and 
wall of our country. " ^ The proverbial courage of the 
English was attributed by the French to the use of the 
long bow which was only serviceable at close quarters.'* 
With certain exceptions for clergy and magistrates all 



I70 TUDOR IDEALS 

Englishmen were supposed to practice archery, and Hol- 
inshed remarked with sanguine overstatement, that every 
parish kept its supply of armour and munition ready at 
an hour's notice, and that there was no village in England 
so poor that it could not equip three or four soldiers. 
The facts of the matter were that military preparation 
was notoriously deficient, and that no serious effort was 
made to overcome this, while in military science England 
remained singularly backward. The theoretical aspects 
of war and the practical aspects of military policy were 
hardly known. The framework of an army did not exist, 
with the result seen in the wretched ending of many mil- 
itary ventures. 

In the conduct of such military operations as were 
undertaken, there was extraordinary diversity, due to 
lack of capacity and lack of discipline. In Dorset's ex- 
pedition to Spain in 151 2 the men were guilty of coward- 
ice and indiscipline and finally sailed back to England 
without orders. At Ancrum Moor an English army 
fled, just as a Scottish army had done at Solway Moss, 
and in Surrey's campaign at Boulogne the troops bolted. 
Such discreditable incidents occur repeatedly. At the 
sielge of Havre, where Mary had expected that her 
resistance would enormously benefit Philip of Spain, the 
forts were taken by the French almost without loss. "It 
is a source of shame to the English," wrote Chantonnay. 
The lack of discipline was often lamented and at the 
siege of Guines in 1558 when Lord Grey refused to sur- 
render, his soldiers threatened to fling him over the walls.^ 
Worst of all, at Alost in 1583, the English garrison not 
only surrendered disgracefully but turning traitors joined 
the Spaniards under Parma. The same thing happened 
later when William Stanley and Rowland Yorke, both of 
whom had been in Leicester's intimacy, went over to the 
enemy. An experienced soldier like Sir John Norris felt 
alarm at the landing of a single Spanish regiment of reg- 
ulars in a land so unprepared as England.^ 



THE ART OF WAR 171 

It is perfectly possible to reconcile such facts with the 
spirit of heroism associated with the age. During the first 
half of the century, the traditions of an army were inexist- 
ent. The nation had cast off its feudal structure without 
adequately replacing this. The old organization which had 
been suited to the wants of a primitive community, pre- 
served certain standards for which others had not yet been 
substituted. When the need arose for a military operation, 
the men collected usually in helter-skelter fashion, felt 
neither discipline, duty nor the obligations of service. 
Leicester in the Low Countries was greatly troubled by the 
unruliness of his subordinates and the perpetual bickerings 
among these.^ 

Old traditions had lapsed while new ones were still un- 
born, and the result became apparent in many deplorable 
occurrences. Except for the display of courage, profes- 
sional standards of honour were hardly existent. Cap- 
tains were accused of leading their companies into battle 
to "enrich themselves by their dead pays. "^ The army 
was a prey to rascals who swindled their own men. Sir 
Henry Knyvett denounced the officers "who had made mer- 
chandise of their places" and Spenser had the same tale 
to tell.^ Discreditable incidents occurred as a natural re- 
sult among the soldiery. In Flanders, they pillaged the 
Dutch peasants whom they were supposed to protect, and 
who had to organize in self-defence against them. In Ire- 
land the disaster at Armagh, where the soldiers fled, aban- 
doning arms and standards, was the result of such a sys- 
tem. 

Yet in spite of lamentable occurrences there were 
acts unsurpassed for high courage. Leicester, always criti- 
cal of his men, relates such an incident at Zutphen, which 
though he lived a hundred years he could never forget.^" 
The adventurous spirit of the race came to the fore in 
many an exploit abroad. If the genius of the age was un- 
able to attain concerted effort it furnished brilliant individ- 
ual example of skill and courage. Gentlemen volunteers 



172 TUDOR IDEALS 

became the fashion, and there was hardly a foreign cam- 
paign whether in Spain, or in Hungary, where Englishmen 
were not found. They were conspicuous for their valour 
among the Huguenots in France, and when at the Valois 
Court complaints were made about this the English Am- 
bassador retorted that although the Sultan and France 
were allied, yet Frenchmen fought against the Turk with- 
out the king being able to prevent this.^^ 

Camden enumerates with pride those English gentle- 
men who feeling that they were born to arms and not to 
idleness had joined the Imperial forces to fight the Sultan. ^^ 
Such warfare incited the spirit of adventure at the same 
time as it produced a new cosmopolitanism acquired on 
the battlefields and in the camps of Europe. Toward the 
end of Elizabeth's reign, England was full of soldiers re- 
turned from the wars, and London of captains raising 
companies for service abroad. ^^ 

The imagination of the people was stirred by their tales. 
Among the reasons which made for the extreme individ- 
ualism of the English genius in the Sixteenth Century, 
was the fact that its contact with life other than its own, 
came from so many diverse sources. The different ele- 
ments in European civilization reacting on each other, 
were brought into close touch through war as much as 
through peace. Such interchange and multiple impres- 
sion came about by the odd jumble of forces in the field. 
The barriers between states were levelled in contests where 
religion was the cry and adventure the goal. Continen- 
tal warfare drew Englishmen from their shell, and made 
them partisans of causes which brought them into famili- 
arity with a very different life from what they had known. 
In such struggles while English participation was never 
on a scale sufficient to mould the nation it yet leavened 
and enriched it. The infusion of French, Spanish, and 
Italian words entering undigested into the language, 
came from inconspicuous soldiers rather than from schol- 
ars and courtiers. A ferment was brought in by the 



THE ART, OF WAR 173 

former to give a new wealth of experience to the monotony 
of life. 

For the first time the military career opened a fresh 
field to the individual. There had been earlier examples 
of Englishmen gaining distinction in quarrels not their 
own, like the famous Sir John Hawkwood, but these were 
rather isolated instances. The novelty of the Renais- 
sance lay in the world lying open to the adventurer, and 
of men shaking off the roots which bound them to their 
homes. If England produced no great military leader 
save perhaps Mountjoy, she brought forth plenty of 
capable soldiers who profited elsewhere by their courage 
and experience. The colonizing energy of Raleigh, 
Smith, "and Roger Williams, had gained experience on 
the battlefields of Europe. 

The career of arms attracted the adventurer of every 
kind. "Every soldier being enrolled in the king's pay is 
reputed a gentleman," Segar could quote approvingly 
from Marshal Trivulzio.^^ A soldier however basely born 
if he had honourably followed the profession of arms 
should be admitted in single combat to fight with other 
gentlemen. 

The military profession divorced from feudal or terri- 
torial idea thus entered into English life. Depending 
only on the free will of the individual it opened a career 
for whoever was possessed of daring and ambition and 
provided an honourable occupation for gentlemen. Phi- 
losophers praised it as bringing out virtues of sacrifice 
and devotion,^'^ while the double ideal of letters and arms 
was illustrated in many men of that time, till it can be 
regarded as characteristic of the Renaissance. Although 
the state failed to create any large military policy, the 
personal incentive from above spurred men to seek dis- 
tinction in war. 

The success of the age never came from handling the 
mass, but the individual, and the latter responded to the 
new impulse in arms. Queen Elizabeth loved the soldier. 



174 TUDOR IDEALS 

and her courtiers took this as an invitation to win honour 
in the wars.^^ The Netherlands were called the queen's 
nurseries where reckless exposure became the fashion. 
Thomas Churchyard, poet and soldier, writing to ask a 
recommendation for service there could say, "The last 
reward of a soldier is death; this do I desire as a man 
that have made choice though unworthy of that profes- 
sion. I covet to die like a soldier and a true subject." ^^ 
To this fashion of exposure competent observers attrib- 
uted the absence of good generals. The scientific- con- 
ception of warfare as it was understood in Italy and 
Spain was hardly known in England. Those who showed 
promise were cut off in their prime by reckless gallantry. 
"In our countries we can scarcely find a veteran com- 
mander and this is owing simply to our recklessness. 
The Spaniards alone are free from this species of mad- 
ness and therefore they possess generals of the utmost 
experience in the art of war who eflfect far more by genius 
than by strength," wrote Languet to Sidney.^^ Yet the 
latter's sacrifice of his life was not to be in vain. The 
anonymous translator of Aristotle's "Politics" could write 
of Philip Sidney, in his dedication as one "who in the 
last age of the declining and degenerating world would 
have honourably emulated those ancient worthies. " 



PART III 
IDEALS OF LIFE AND THOUGHT 



I. IDEALS IN ENGLISH LIFE 

Certain contemporary ideals may have exercised little prac- 
tical effect on life but they cannot be lightly dismissed 
because of this. Apart from representing lone voices in 
the wilderness, many of the ideas originally born in the 
Sixteenth were to reappear in the Eighteenth Century. 
The belief of Rousseau in the virtuous savage was al- 
ready current in the Renaissance. In Starkey's curi- 
ous dialogue Cardinal Pole is represented as arguing 
against the idea of man's gradual rise to civil life in favour 
of savages without "policy." Men in the forest away 
from laws and regulations who there pursue virtue, 
were nearer to the manner of life in the golden age when 
man lived according to his natural dignity.^ 

One effect of the revival of antiquity was to make men 
think once more in Platonic terms. In a life of struggle 
the mind turns toward dreams of a perfect world. Thomas 
More, devout Christian though he was, in "Utopia" 
abandons entirely the ascetic medieval ideal. The folk of 
his fancy judge it "extreme madness to follow sharp and 
painful virtue, and not only to banish the pleasure of 
life, but also willingly to suffer grief without any hope of 
profit thereof ensuing. " ^ Felicity was to rest in honest 
pleasure. The ideal world as represented by More, with 
its sympathy for the poor, its indignation at injustice and 
its wide tolerance, was more than a noble fancy. 

In a period of such rapid change as marked the begin- 
ning of the Sixteenth Century in England, character could 
with difficulty develop in rigid moulds and Paulet's famous 
epigram about the willow was typical of many who had 
not the frankness to admit such pliability. Conditions 
were too fluid to develop a fixed type or leave more than 

177 



178 TUDOR IDEALS 

a vague consciousness which grouped itself around the na- 
tional growth. If exceptions like Fisher and More stand 
out, the great majority of the nation in its various crises 
waited to know who would be successful before taking 
sides, though occasional disgust was felt at such "neu- 
ters" as worse than the most arrant traitors.^ Undue 
caution and a lack of generosity and impulse vitiated 
the character of many Englishmen in the first half of the 
century. Men felt little at ease in that strange whirlpool 
of ideas. With most of their early convictions sapped or 
destroyed, there was small room for elevation of the mind. 
Amid the rapid transition all former organized groupings 
of authority had been profoundly affected. The struggle 
had been too intense, and the wounds were still too raw for 
a nobler plant to grow at once. The great mass groped in 
blindness little able to explain the changes to themselves 
and without more conscious purpose than to pursue the 
normal activities of existence. Their imagination was 
as yet unfired by anything more ennobling. The rude 
discipline of the struggle for faith was still in its be- 
ginning. The danger from Spain had not yet appeared. 
The world beyond the seas was almost unknown. 

Out of these three elements the future developed. In- 
wardly, conditions settled gradually. Newly rich and 
newly ennobled were absorbed by the land, and their chil- 
dren and their grandchildren entered into its life in the 
same way as those who had been attached to it for cen- 
turies. But other ideals created in an age of chivalry 
and feudalism were well-nigh dead, and a period of tran- 
sition occurred before conditions were again ripe to develop 
fresh beliefs. The new ones arose out of the circumstances 
of the age. The edifices built by philosophers made but 
little impression on the nation's mind, but the persecu- 
tion of the faith responded to real necessities. As soon 
as men believed that their souls were in danger, they be- 
came ready to risk their lives and the same was true when 
they felt their land to be in danger. The English charac- 



IDEALS IN ENGLISH LIFE 179 

ter is normally slow in its response, and sluggish to arouse. 
In the Sixteenth Century, it took longer to understand 
the new conditions of life than did other European 
natioftsr But once these had filtered into the race it re- 
acted to them vigorously. Life was grouped around a pa- 
triotism inspired by the fear of the land being in danger, 
but embracing two widely different yet connected chan- 
nels. The one of Protestantism which made England 
a bulwark in the struggle against Rome, and Eliza- 
beth the centre of the citadel, the other of adventure 
which served a patriotic goal in the sense that it was 
mainly directed against Spain, but which also grouped 
around it the different virtues out of which the greatness 
of England was to rise. The old caution gave way to a 
new restlessness. English gentlemen embarked as pi- 
rates for distant seas satisfied v/ith the sanction that their 
enterprise was against Spain. A new daring inspired 
English soldiers and made them adventure into "many 
dangerous and vain exploits. " ^ Reckless courage be- 
came the most prized virtue. Never was the transfor- 
mation of a people more sudden. 

The changes in national traits are among the most baf- 
fling facts before historians. There is always the wish to 
find a great current of unity inspiring a race from its earli- 
est times. This rarely corresponds to truth. It is only 
necessary to study the example of Ireland where, since 
the Middle Ages, men of English blood exchanged their 
English characteristics for Irish, and the conscious na- 
tionalism of British policy failed before the realism of 
life. National traits depend far more on circumstances 
and conditions than on blood. The English although 
an insular people, never became a seafaring race until 
events in the Sixteenth Century guided them to find 
their future on the water. 

In its conscious ideal the Sixteenth Century shook off 
the religious mould of previous ages. It is odd to find 
even a clerical writer like Starkey openly expressing a 



i8o TUDOR IDEALS 

secular conception of life. The perfect man, he wrote, 
was he who did his duty in spite of perils and of adversity. 
Far more praiseworthy is such a man than one who out 
of fear of danger seeks repose in a convent.^ Monastic 
seclusion was no longer an inspiration. The Renaissance 
replaced such Christian ideals by those taken from an- 
tiquity. The new moral training of education came from 
Greece and Rome, although a cynic could then write "we 
hold most of their vices but what suppressed their vices 
and kept them in awe we have not. "^ Yet stoic phi- 
losophy left a stamp of elevation on the finer minds of 
the age, and Walsingham with a pagan ideal in his soul 
wrote that though a man achieve not honour by doing 
worthy acts, yet he is happier than one that gets it with- 
out desert.' 



11. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES 

With fresh outlets for energy before the individual, the 
first half of the Sixteenth Century was a period of too 
rapid evolution to permit fixed conditions to be estab- 
lished. Respect for convention ceases during a crisis. 
In "The Tempest" the boatswain remarks on the waves' 
indifference to the name of king, and reminds Gonzalo 
that though two princes were aboard, there was none he 
loved better than himself. Times of rapid change favour 
men from every class coming to the fore. There may 
have been in this little that was, in itself, democratic 
beyond the equality of opportunity, but it meant that the 
race for success was open to all. In spite of subsequent 
recessions it admitted a new principle which with the 
spread of education reduced the divisions of caste. 

An occasional effort toward agrarian communism had 
existed in the Middle Ages, inherited from primitive times. 
The famous lines of John Ball — 

" When Adam delved and Eve span, 
who was then the gentleman" — 

were heard on the occasion of every peasant rising. But 
the people asserted themselves too spasmodically to ef- 
fect a permanent impression. Not till the Sixteenth 
Century did classical cultivation awaken the memo- 
ries of antiquity on the subject of human freedom. Eras- 
mus in his Ante Polemus wrote of princes with fine con- 
stitutional spirit, "What power and sovereignty soever 
you have, you have it by the consent of the people. And 
if I be not deceived, he that hath authority to give hath 
authority to take away again." 

The discovery of the lower classes was one of the ef- 
fects of the Reformation. During the Middle Ages, 

i8i 



i82 TUDOR IDEALS 

peasants had hardly been considered worthy of notice. 
With the growth of intellectual curiosity and the seed of 
democratic ideas, the cultivated began to look below them. 

Wolsey's dying advice to the king had been to dis- 
trust the people. '^ Prior to the Eighteenth Century, 
nearly all political thought savours of such distrust. The 
instability and fickleness of the mob was brought out else- 
where than in Julius Caesar.^ Expressions of democracy 
were infrequent. Its force was still inarticulate and one 
discerns its existence rather by the arguments employed 
against it than by its own defence. Only an occasional 
reformer like Brynklow could suggest as a practical plan 
that lords and burgesses sit together in one house. ^ 

A few favoured an ideal of communism though less vi- 
olently in England than in Germany. It is remarkable 
that this should have met with real sympathy from a 
future Chancellor like More. No one has ever brought 
out more forcibly the contrast between the over remuner- 
ation of certain classes and the miserable condition ot 
the workers.^ His idea of the state with its socialized 
activities is communistic and in certain respects far 
more radical than modern doctrine. Full of sympathy 
for the wretchedness of the working classes whose starva- 
tion wages left them unable to save for their old age, he 
felt the injustice of a condition which gave great re- 
wards "to gentlemen as they call them" and none to the 
real toilers, and denounced such a state as being one in 
which the wealthy got together to defraud the poor under 
the name of law. No modern socialist attacking property 
could be more violent than this future Lord Chancellor 
inveighing against the economic evils of his time. 

The idea of common property where men did not la- 
bour for private gain had been frequent among preachers 
like Thomas Lever. Except for More, few of the economic 
reformers possessed practical intelligence. Crowley, who 
urged merchants to refrain from making more money 
also advised sons to continue their fathers* trades. Wide- 



DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES 183 

spread dissatisfaction gave occasion for the expression of 
sympathy to the poor and the wish to redress their griev- 
ances. A system of rewards for industry was recom- 
mended as it was recognized that laws could not set every- 
thing right nor compel men to be industrious.^ In a 
curious pamphlet of the age, a merchant and knight ar- 
gue about primacy, till the ploughman who enters de- 
clares that gentleman and beggar come from one stock 
and that virtue alone gives superiority. The conclusion 
favoured elective government for a term of years with 
rulers curbed by stringent laws.^ 

The spiritual foundation for democracy came, however, 
from religion. Already, Polydore Vergil had expressed 
belief that it began among the ancient Hebrews "which 
were ruled by a popular state. "'^ The primitive faith of 
Christianity which the reformers aimed to revive, was 
democratic in spirit. Latimer preached that before God's 
Judgment Seat all would be equal since princes and 
ploughman were alike made of one matter.^ A growing 
sympathy for the poor was felt and its expression at times 
assumed a form which partly through religious, partly 
through classical influence would now be called demo- 
cratic. When under Henry VIII the Canterbury school 
changed from monkish to lay hands certain of the com- 
missioners appointed to carry this out tried to restrict 
future pupils to gentlemen's sons, saying that the others 
were better fitted for the plough and handicrafts, than 
to be learned, and only those of gentle birth were to have 
"the knowledge of government and rule in the Common- 
wealth. " Cranmer opposed this as being contrary to the 
Divine Will whose gifts were given indifferently to any 
class, and told the commissioners that though they were 
themselves gentlemen born yet they all sprang from lowly 
beginnings and owed their elevation to education. And 
he said "If the gentleman's son be apt to learning let 
him be admitted; if not let the poor man's child apt, enter 
his room.^ The first bill introduced into the House of 



i84 TUDOR IDEALS 

Commons in Edward VFs reign was one "for bringing 
up poor men's children. "^^ If not the direct outcome of 
Brynklow's ideas for needy children to be educated at the 
expense of the community it showed the existence of a new 
feeling for the poor. In the interest taken in social re- 
form by men like Lupset, Brynklow and Crowley, John 
Hales and Thomas Lever, real sympathy for the less 
fortunate classes was expressed. 

The early manifestations of democracy were less with 
respect to secular than to church affairs. The study of 
the Bible awakened the first revolt against authority, 
though the idea that the State must dominate the faith 
of the people was never thrown off in the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury. Elizabeth showed herself as keen for uniformity 
as Rome, but reformers who had been to Zurich and 
Geneva, returned full of ideas of spiritual independence 
on the part of each community, and in revolt against the 
crown's authority in matters of religion. The great 
stimulus given to democratic ideas came from the Conti- 
nent where the training of communal life had rendered 
easier its assertion. Calvinism assumed a self-governing 
form and Lawrence Humphrey, the defender of the aris- 
tocratic idea, denounced the anabaptists because of their 
belief that all should have equal rights, ^l 

When the Puritans in England attacked the bishops 
they were working toward a Church democracy which 
soon afterwards assumed so despotic a form in Massa- 
chusetts. Beyond religious autonomy the next step 
was political. The Sixteenth Century is usually set 
down as an age of political reaction, but the new reli- 
gious ideas brought with them an evolution of the people 
toward a realization of their rights and became in turn 
the foundation for future democracy. Thus Puritan dem- 
ocratic leanings made them show aversion to coat ar- 
mour.^2 Their writers spoke of the essential equality of 
all at birth and in death ^^ and allowed only a moral 
foundation to gentility. The rough equality of all primi- 




DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES 185 

tive communities with their natural outlets given to 
ability, were to find fresh vigour in the oversea expansion 
of England. 

A curious rhythm of life can be discerned. Where the 
internal revolution effected by Henry VIII had given 
free scope to personality, the second half of the cen- 
tury witnessed the growth of two unconsciously opposing 
tendencies which supplemented each other. Internally, the 
greater stability of the state caused a new conservatism 
of wealth which extending once more over the land built 
the broad foundations of England which have survived, 
almost to this day. Parallel with this, the expansion of 
the nation overseas with its beginning at colonization 
and its growing trade, caused the free outlet for oppor- 
tunity. The democratic idea which was still unformed and 
cherished only in the minds of a few preachers or scholars, 
could later find its support prepared for it in a more asser- 
tive and enterprising medium than existed in a conserva- 
tive agricultural community. 

Evidence of sympathy for republican Ideas may be 
discerned in a Lord Chancellor and courtier like Hatton,^^ 
who contrasts a "popular estate " to a monarchy by 
remarking not very appropriately, that "a popular es- 
tate which is perpetual and never dieth because there 
reigneth no king, always thankfully remembereth and 
bountifully rewardeth those that have truly and faith- 
fully served. " There were then greater reactions against 
the pomp of courts than is commonly supposed. Queen 
Elizabeth's vanity of apparel has effaced impressions 
like that of William of Orange "going about in a gown 
which a mean born student in our Inns of Court would 
not have worn, while his waistcoat was like what was worn 
by watermen in England" and his company were "the 
burgesses of that beer-brewing town."^^ 

The trend toward democracy was also indirect. It 
touched other tendencies which while not democratic in 
their intention, became so by their result. The ideal of 



i86 TUDOR IDEALS 

virtu characteristic of the Renaissance, meant the abil- 
ity for personahty to assert itself, unrestricted by any limi- 
tations. It gave free play to energy and in so far as it 
transcended all rigid convention its purpose was the same 
as that offered by democracy. Tamburlaine who creates 
his generals Kings of Morocco and Algiers tells them 

"Your birth shall be no blemish to your fame 
For virtue is the fount where honour springs." 

(Part I, IV, IV, 131,^?.) 

Democratic ideas were probably unknown to Marlowe 
who would, doubtless, have condemned their Puritan 
taint, but the spirit of free energy and equaUty of oppor- 
tunity was in his mind. Drayton could, likewise pro- 
claim that all were born alike and styled those without 
qualities of their own 

"Base I proclaim you though derived from Kings." ^^ 

The conscious belief in democracy remained unfor- 
mulated, but the conditions were at hand which allowed 
its later growth by destroying whatever barred the way 
to a free assertion of personality. Men dreamed of a better 
state, and reinforced their vision by classical example. 
Shakespeare pointed to America as the land of promise, 
and located in the Bermudas the hope of the New World, 
the land where there were neither rich nor poor, nor rulers 
nor ruled. 



III. PATRIOTISM AS AN IDEAL 

The medieval conception of patriotism reposed on per- 
sonal loyalty rather than on any definite idea of the state. 
It arose out of the feudal structure and possessed only a 
shadowy vision of national consciousness. The feeling 
toward the latter came gradually and was due to the 
unification of the nation under Tudor rule and the dis- 
covery of antiquity acting directly and by suggestion 
through the example of neighbouring states. 

Already, in the time of Henry VI when the need for a 
Navy had became pressing, the shipowners offered to 
lend and provision their vessels for service.^ The ship- 
ping community was normally the one which would first 
respond to the centralizing tendencies of the state. But 
a long period of civil wars, freedom from serious foreign 
danger, and the absence of a real foreign policy, were not 
calculated to bring out patriotism in the nation. Henry 
VI's queen thought little of inviting the French to sack 
Sandwich out of hatred to the Duke of York.^ The call- 
ing in of foreigners was not regarded in the modern light. 
Caxton contrasted the devotion of the Romans ready 
to lay down their lives for their country with the weak 
patriotism he saw about him.^ Fisher pressed for the 
invasion of England by Charles V; Lord Darcy and Lord 
Hussey in the North urged the emperor to invade Eng- 
land promising their support; even Wolsey was accused 
of a simil-ar wish. 

Great emotions have fired the spirit of nations far more 
effectively than the low pressure of more material inter- 
ests. The lives of states as of individuals, is oftener de- 
termined by the sudden emotional reactions to danger, 
than by the continuous response to normal needs. Be- 
tween the pedestrian view of history which finds its 

187 



i88 TUDOR IDEALS 

interest in the chronicle of humdrum events, and the at- 
tempt to penetrate its spirit at the rare moments when 
this is Hfted by the fire of something more ennoWing, Hes 
the difference in its interpretation. 

By its classical revival the Sixteenth Century learned 
the civic virtues of antiquity. The Renaissance bor- 
rowed an antique foundation for its patriotic ideas, quot- 
ing Plato that men were not born for themselves but for 
their country. Ancient examples of patriotism were held 
up admiringly by Sixteenth Century writers who found 
duty to the state taking the place of the feudal devo- 
tion to the individual. The feeling grew that the greatest 
service a man could render was to save his country from 
danger.^ The ideal of the state became a goal for which 
everyone could strive. In Machiavelli's words, "Where 
the welfare of the country is at stake, no consideration can 
intervene of justice, or injustice, of mercy or cruelty, 
commendable or ignominious but putting all else aside, 
one must adopt whatever cause will save its existence 
and preserve its liberty. " ^ 

The national spirit asserted on the ruins of feudalism, 
demanded the use of the vernacular to be substituted for 
the Latin of the Universal church. The cosmopolitan 
fabric of Europe as a Christian republic was crumbling, 
and in its place, national growth was everywhere evident. 
By an odd paradox the discovery of antiquity was to in- 
tensify the divergence of states who, out of a common 
culture, then extracted the sense of their own national 
consciousness. 

Early expressions of such ideas came from those who 
living abroad had been influenced by the new patriotism 
learned in foreign parts which served to kindle their own. 

"My King, My Country I seek for whom I live" wrote 
Wyatt on his return from Spain. An Englishman who had 
spent his life abroad, and was the first to come under the 
charm of the new continental schools of poetry, was yet 
he, in whose 



PATRIOTISM AS AN IDEAL 189 

" lively brain 
as on a stithe where that some work of fame 
was daily wrought to Britain's gain 

a worthy guide to bring 

Our English youth by travail unto fame." ^ 

The development of the national spirit grew by its re- 
action from whatever was foreign. The suggestion that 
Henry should plead his divorce before a Roman tribunal 
caused the greatest indignation. The English national 
spirit had always objected to papal interference, but 
whereas in the Middle Ages such resentment was confined 
to few in number, it was now extended numerically among 
a people morally prepared for the revolt from Rome. 
The exaltation of royalty was another step toward at- 
taining such national consciousness. The power of the 
prince raised to an unprecedented height became the in- 
termediate condition before vesting the same authority 
in the state. Various circumstances coincided for inten- 
sifying patriotism. The royal power firmly grasped, 
offered a tangible object in place of former loyalties to 
feudal and religious lords, which had been definitely 
sapped. Lastly, classical education held out a conscious 
patriotic ideal borrowed from antiquity. England ac- 
quiring her new patriotism followed the example taken 
by other European states whose evolution had been sim- 
ilar. But where Italy, cursed by foreign interference 
and internal bickerings, failed to attain unity, and France 
found it delayed by religious war, England, more fortu- 
nate, gained this almost at once. 

The duty of service now became transferred from the 
feudal lord to the state. The feeling aroused against the 
new class of middlemen who leased the land was based on 
the fear of their alleged lack of patriotism and inability 
" to do the King service. " ^ When Ralph Robinson trans- 
lated " Utopia" he did so ostensibly as a duty to God and 
to his country.^ In Starkey's " Dialogue," Cardinal Pole is 
urged to devote his life to the affairs of the Commonwealth. 



190 TUDOR IDEALS 

Men must have regard for their country's welfare and he 
who neglects this for the pleasure of his own quiet, does 
wrong. This was the ancient ideal of civil life revived by 
the Renaissance. Every individual was expected to do his 
duty toward the state and place the good of the Common- 
wealth above everything else.^ 

The patriotic duty of scholars was pointed out and Sir 
Thomas Elyot impressed the fact on his reader that the 
reason for devoting the greater part of his life to studying 
the ancients came from his wish to benefit his country. ^'^ 
Patriotism became exalted into the highest virtue and some 
there were bold enough no longer to identify it with the 
prince. At a time when personal allegiance was still very 
strong, an independent thinker like Poynet could maintain 
that "men ought to have more respect to their country 
than to their prince; to the commonwealth than to any 
one person. For the country and the commonwealth is a 
degree above the King." ^^ This was the principle of the 
commonwealth party, v/hich later made John Hales write 
in a similar strain about the citizen's duty to his country. 

The patriotic ideal was shaped by literature. Gas- 
coigne impressed their duty to defend the Common- 
wealth and respond to their country's claim on lords, 
knights, and squires,^^ and Richard Crompton could 
say "No man is born only for himself but for his coun- 
try also."^^ This antique thought ran through letters. 
Every writer felt he was performing a service toward his 
fellow countrymen. The feeling of obligation and of ow- 
ing everything to the State was more than a convention. 
"The power of one man is far too feeble ever to make 
his country his debtor," wrote Sir William Cornwallis.^* 

Religion and patriotism were generally identified in 
the Sixteenth Century. Faith formed usually so great a 
part of the national creed that the patriotism of most 
English Catholics was all the more to their credit. Car- 
dinal Allen was quick to note that the number of Catho- 
lics who revolted in England was as nothing compared to 




PATRIOTISM AS AN IDEAL 191 

the Calvinists in France. ^^ The question was open if 
it was lawful to bear arms in the service of a prince ot 
another religion, though writers pointed out that, when 
Pope Julius II found himself in danger, he accepted aid 
from a squadron of Turks, while Paul IV took Grisons 
Protestant as his mercenaries.^^ 

A theory of patriotism derived from different origins 
grew to fit the circumstances in every country. In Italy, 
where feudal traditions were weak and the classical ex- 
ample strong, the excess of individualism triumphed. 
Loyalty to a sovereign in the northern sense, was there 
well-nigh unknown, and patriotism, though occasionally 
intense when not centred on culture was cherished as a 
remote ideal. In France the closer balance of opposing 
religious forces and the weaker power of the throne 
caused many to waver. Brantome describing the Hugue- 
not La Noue who fought against his king, asked if any 
real foundation exists for the patriotic ideal and if this was 
not an invention of Kings and Commonwealths for self- 
preservation. The Du/ce pro patria mori might have 
some foundation, he thought, but it was easy to go too 
far in sacrificing to it all other duties and obligations.^^ 
Such views were rare. Almost the only contemporary 
instance of English antipatriotic sentiments are the ones 
put by Peele in the mouth of Sir Thomas Stukely, who 
on his way to Ireland to fight the English, and ship- 
wrecked on the coast of Portugal, is asked by the Portu- 
guese to explain his conduct in fighting against his sov- 
ereign and responds: 

"I may at liberty make choice 
of all the continents that bound the world 
For why, I make it not so great desert 
To be begot or bom in any place." ^^ 

Even he found it necessary to explain that if the love of 
the fatherland was alienated it must be because of reli- 
gion, and not for personal benefit. 



192 TUDOR IDEALS 

England was spared from most of the evils of a divided 
allegiance by its gradual and comparatively bloodless con- 
version to Protestantism. The Catholic attempts after 
the early years of Elizabeth's reign were forlorn hopes. A 
few misguided fanatics at Douai and Louvain, or in Rome, 
could plot against the queen. But even Cardinal Allen, 
thundering the vilest abuse against her, places himself in 
the attitude of an English patriot, grieved at seeing his 
nation in heretical hands and eager to devote his life to his 
"dearest country. "^^ He calls on Philip that "for his 
singular love to England" of which he once was king, he 
should take the lead in such a crusade. 

The excesses of a few fanatics were to do infinite harm 
to the great mass of English Catholics who amid diffi- 
cult circumstances were trying to prove their loyalty. 
Pius V's injudicious bull excommunicating Elizabeth and 
absolving English Catholics from their allegiance, was 
deeply resented by the vast majority of these who paid 
no attention to it, especially when they saw its slight ef- 
fect on the relations which other Catholic countries 
maintained with the queen. It served mainly to harm 
patriotic Catholics who now became objects of distrust 
and of popular prejudice. Roman intolerance reacted to 
its own disadvantage and only cast suspicion on its sup- 
porters. The patriotism of many, who lived and died 
abroad, unable by force of circumstance to do their duty 
to England strikes one of the saddest notes of the age. 
Cardinal Allen's secretary, Roger Bayne, whose life was 
passed in Italy, wrote with ineffectual conviction of the 
scholar's duty to leave his seclusion at his country's call 
and be ready to offer his life in sacrifice.^'' 

Most English Catholics availed themselves of the sanc- 
tion given by Sixtus V which authorized obedience to the 
queen in civil matters. They smarted keenly under the 
charge of lack of patriotism, and Cardinal Allen himself, 
in his anonymous "Apologie of the English Seminaries," 
published at Mons in 1581, protests that the departure of 



PATRIOTISM AS AN IDEAL 193 

Catholics from England was not due to any want of af- 
fection since their one desire was to serve "our beloved 
countrie." In the risings against Elizabeth a few Cath- 
olics, it is true, informed the Spanish Ambassador that 
they were ready to enter his master's service. But when 
so staunch a Protestant as Maitland of Lethington, was 
at one time ready to turn over Scotland and England to 
Philip as Mary's husband, it is hard to fathom motives 
which then revolved as much around persons as causes. 

In spite of the bull of Pius V releasing her subjects 
from obedience. Fathers Campion and Sherwin when 
brought to the block, prayed for Elizabeth's prosperity 
and happiness as their Queen ^^ with the same fervour as 
the Puritan John Stubbes. Certain English Catholics 
who accepted service abroad offered, however, strange ex- 
amples of divided allegiance. John Story, who took the 
oath of loyalty to the King of Spain and plotted with 
him against Elizabeth, when afterward tried for treason 
pleaded in vain his Spanish allegiance.^^ But Sir Thomas 
Copley who served the King of Spain, refi ains in hardly 
any of his letters from fulsome exclamations of patriotism 
in order to prove that though accepting such service he 
remained at heart a patriotic Englishman. How often 
he begs the queen for any kind of employ "wherein a 
good Catholic Christian may without hazard of his soul 
serve his temporal prince . . . though for the time I 
live abroad I cannot cease to be an Englishman and love 
the soil best where I have most freehold."-^ The idea of 
property was here tied up with that of patriotism. 

More remarkable was the case of Sir William Stanley 
who although a Catholic, proved to be one of Elizabeth's 
ablest soldiers in Ireland and in the Low Countries. He 
was given various important commands and the govern- 
orship of Deventer. For reasons which remain obscure, 
whether because of pique in not having shared in the 
spoils, or else religious, he surrendered to the enemy with 
his soldiers, most of whom were Irish Catholics, and en- 



194 TUDOR IDEALS 

tered the Spanish service. Cardinal . Allen, blundering 
as usual, wrote a defence of his action,^^ on the ground 
that English intervention in Flanders was piracy and 
that a Catholic who served a heretic partook of his 
iniquity. 

The anonymous author of "Leicester's Commonwealth" 
makes one of his spokesmen a papist lawyer "but with 
such moderation and reservation of duty toward his 
Prince and Country." Diversity of creed from the head 
of the state was in theory considered to involve an element 
of treason, but so long as this was not translated into 
action there was no ground for condemnation. Raleigh 
could, therefore, exhort all Englishmen "of what religion 
soever" to join together against the Spaniard. And a less 
known writer could say "Though we be divided for re- 
ligion . . . yet I trust that we will wholly faithfully 
. . . join together in this service of defence of our 
Prince and country against the enemy. "^^ 

Elizabeth looked at differences of faith in a purely politi- 
cal light and 1 er choice of Admiral Lord Howard is the 
best evidence of her reliance on Catholic loyalty. The 
hatred of Spain burned deep in the national character 
and aroused every interest of patriotism, greed, adven- 
ture and religion. Englishmen could gratify all these at the 
expense of the Spaniard and Raleigh found pride in the 
fact that England had first revealed their weakness before 
the world. ^^ The Spanish forces "at home, abroad, in Eu- 
rope, in India, by sea and land, we have even with hand- 
fuls of men and ships overthrown and dishonoured." 

Those who lost their lives in this crusade could say, 
like Richard Grenville, that he died "with a joyful 
and quiet mind, having ended his life as a true soldier 
ought to do that hath fought for his country, queen, reli- 
gion and honour.' '^^ The English of Elizabeth's reign were 
fully conscious of having performed deeds of courage such 
as had been celebrated by the ancients. Daring, coupled 
with patriotic purpose, was exalted into an ideal of life. 



PATRIOTISM AS AN IDEAL* 195 

and when Gervase Markham, himself an old soldier, cele- 
brated the last fight of the "Revenge" he wrote 

Never shall Greece nor Rome nor Heathen State 
With shining honour Albion's shine depress." 

Pride in what Englishmen had done, became every- 
where apparent. In his relation of Frobisher's Voyages, 
Beste recites with satisfaction the roll call of English nav- 
igators whose daring had at times led them to an " hon- 
ourable death." Though he did not begrudge Spaniards 
and Portuguese their fame for successes in navigation, yet 
he remarked they had never encountered such hardships 
nor such dangers as Englishmen. 

The feeling of patriotism became intense. When War- 
wick wrote to encourage Leicester to persist in his for- 
ward policy in the Low Countries in the face of the queen's 
displeasure, it was on the ground of its benefit to Eng- 
land.^^ The modern idea of patriotism as something 
separate from the crown although associated therewith, 
was growing. The centralization of authority made this 
possible for the first time. The dignity of England was 
above everything and could make men forget their per- 
sonal animosities. The French Ambassador de Maisse 
was impressed by Essex urging him to call on his greatest 
enemy Burleigh, and wrote, lis ont de grans respects 
les uns aux autresP Coming himself from a court torn 
by personal dissensions he admired the fact that these 
could be kept under and that avowed enemies treated 
each other with respect. 

Yet patriotism as a living growth was only deeply roused 
by the presence of real danger. No one cared after a dis- 
aster in Ireland suffered at the hands of Tyrone; such 
general indifference was laid down to "a careless and insen- 
sible dulness. "^° When it was falsely rumoured in London 
that the Spaniards had landed on the Isle of Wight, this 
news "had such fear and consternation in this town as I 
would little have looked for with such a cry of women — 



196 ' TUDOR IDEALS 

chaining of streets and shutting of the gates as though the 
enemy had been at Blackwall. I am sorry and ashamed 
that this weakness and nakedness of ours on all sides 
should show itself so apparently as to be carried far and 
near to our disgrace both with friends and foes."^^ 

Nothing more differentiates our age from earlier ones 
than the disciplining of its patriotism. A new public 
opinion often intolerantly expressed has brought about a 
unifying of national judgment impossible before the ad- 
vent of popular education. The alternatives between in- 
difference to national disaster and unseemly fear, which 
are occasionally found in the pages of English history, 
cannot be laid down to any want of patriotism but to the 
absence of an established standard. It is among the 
merits of democracy to have impressed the mass with a 
far greater feeling than before of its responsibility. The 
first glimpse of this was seen in the national response at 
the moment of the Spanish danger. 




IV. RELIGION IN THE STATE 

In his "Apologie" Cardinal Allen wrote of England. "It 
is the turpitude of our nation through the whole World, 
whereat we blush before strangers that sometimes fall 
into discourse of such things, that in one man's memory 
and since this strange mutation began, we have had to our 
Prince a man who abolished the Pope's authority by his 
laws, and yet in other points kept the faith of his fathers; 
we have had a child who by the like laws abolished 
together with the Papacy the whole ancient religion; we 
have had a woman who restored both again and sharply 
punished Protestants; and lastly her Ma*'^ that now is who 
by the like laws hath long since abolished both again, and 
now severely punished Catholics as the other did Protes- 
tants; and all these strange differences within the compass 
of thirty years."^ 

Few things are more difficult to understand than the 
religious spirit in an age of such swift change as the 
Sixteenth Century. A matter so controversial, allowing 
room for opposite opinions, might be preferable to avoid. 
But religion occupied too great a part in the activity of 
the age for this to be possible. It was still an essential 
discipline of life and its civil aspects left over as the great 
legacy of the Middle Ages were universal. Whether in 
its Roman, its Lutheran, or its Calvinist dress, the secular 
side it assumed was largely a medieval inheritance. 

Apart from its doctrinal and disciplinary evolution the 
religious history of the age offers enormous interest in 
its relations with the beginnings of a new idea of faith as 
separate from the state. This modern doctrine dates from 
the Eighteenth Century, which expanded ideas whose cau- 
tious origins can be traced to the latter part of the Six- 
teenth Century. In France such convictions brought to 

197 



198 TUDOR IDEALS 

power Henry IV's party, and in England they strength- 
ened EHzabeth's rule. 

On the Continent the Reformation reacted to political 
circumstances which hardened its development. In Eng- 
land this was guided more by national than by theo- 
logical considerations, and the result was a compromise. 
England transformed the spirit of the Reformation as 
much as the Reformation transformed England. The si- 
lent absorbing power of the British nature, by slow con- 
tinuous pressure even when apparently acting through 
direct measures, was always more practical than theoret- 
ical, more instinctive than it was intellectual. 

A great movement like the Reformation around which 
English history for a century grouped itself, was partly 
popular and partly directed by the crown, with a shifting 
borderland between the two. It began amid disorder, half 
intentionally, half accidentally, to end upon a secure na- 
tional foundation. In turn persecuted, and persecuting, it 
passed through the most sensational vicissitudes alternat- 
ing between victory, defeat and compromise, to end in 
victory. 

Rarely do ideas spring fully armed into the world and 
the Reformation offers no exception. It came from no 
single fatherhood, for its seeds, in all that concerned the 
attacks on the corruption of the clergy, were of very an- 
cient date. Yet not till the Sixteenth Century when the 
many causes of unrest, spiritual, economic, and political, 
were able for the first time to unite, did it gather the 
strength of victory. 

On the Continent, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli ended by 
each offering their own guidance in the place of Rome, but 
in England no great religious leader appeared. The king 
would never have tolerated one. The religious ferment 
was, however, intense and the feeling strong against 
the Roman church. But the English political genius ex- 
pressed by the crown was ready with an acceptable solu- 
tion flattering to the national pride. As a religious mas- 



RELIGION IN THE STATE 199 

ter was necessary, the new master was to be the king 
who symbohzed the realm. In taking into his own hands 
the spiritual reins, he diverted to his purposes the popu- 
lar discontent against Rome. Apart from dynastic con- 
siderations or the greedy thirst for the Church's wealth, 
and merely from a political point of view the crown util- 
ized the popular feeling to throw over an adversary who 
could never consent to be a subordinate. 

The popularity of the Reformation came from its ap- 
peal to the growing nationalism and its resentment of all 
foreign interference. Added to this was the quickened conr- 
sciousness of men impatient of a distant authority which 
claimed to dominate their life and no longer subservient 
to a dogma in which they felt declining interest. The great 
popular awakening gathered strength while the Church 
remained stationary. On the one side was an expanding 
force still uncontrolled, still unaware of its own strength, 
yet groping in the dark toward moral betterment. On 
the other was a vast and venerable institution which kept 
its authority by tradition and maintained it later by the 
balance of political forces. 

Only a few years had passed since the death of the 
founder of the Tudor dynasty. He gave no reason to an- 
ticipate religious changes. His orthodoxy was entire. He 
had tried to obtain the canonization of Henry VI on the 
ground that miracles had been wrought at his tomb al- 
though three popes were unwilling to grant this, lest, as 
Bacon suggests, that monarch's simple-mindedness bring 
the honour into disrepute. Katherine of Aragon, herself 
most devout, was yet struck by the rigid religious discipline 
prevailing at court and wrote to her father of how she had 
been obliged to sell from her wardrobe in order to buy 
meat. Those who ate it on days of abstention were re- 
garded as heretics.^ An ascetic tradition surviving from 
the Middle Ages still exercised its hold on believers. A 
prelate so worldly as Wolsey unknown to all save his con- 
fessor^ wore a hair shirt next to his skin. More's piety 



20O TUDOR IDEALS 

would be a hackneyed subject were it less noble. Oddly 
enough, the martyr of orthodoxy, in " Utopia," described 
his conception of religion in terms of pure deism. Utopians 
"believe that there is a certain Godly power unknown, 
everlasting, incomprehensible, inexplicable, far above the 
capacity and reach of man's work, dispersed throughout 
all the world, not in bigness but in virtue and power. "^ 
Like many of the nobler minds of the early Renais- 
sance, More looked for a broader interpretation of the 
Roman doctrine which he refused to abandon. 

Faith was close to the minds of most men. Theology 
was a living question and its political aspects made its 
discussion of immediate interest. Apart from such prac- 
tical sides, the sudden vicissitudes of life, the alterna- 
tion of its favours, and the closeness of death, made men 
more prone to look toward the spiritual sides of exist- 
ence. The impress on the mind left by centuries of 
medieval culture was still strong, and had not yet been 
weakened by any widespread accumulation of scepticism 
or indifference. Devotion and prayer formed an intimate 
part of life. All the Tudors were pious. Henry VIII 
wrote on theology, Edward VI felt the same interest, 
Elizabeth translated the " Mirror of Virtue." 

In such an atmosphere of orthodoxy Henry VIII was 
brought up. The religious turn of his mind became no- 
ticeable with all his acts, and he himself tried John Lam- 
bert, a member of the Christian Brotherhood, who was 
condemned to death by the king for his unorthodox views 
about the real presence. It is hard to judge the depth of 
inward feeling by outward fact or to appreciate the value 
attached to faith through the connection between church 
and state, but the result became plain enough in the king's 
effort to obtain civil supremacy over the church. His 
continual innovations and changes baffled even contem- 
porary observers, who were at a loss to understand how 
on the same day and the same hour three men could be 
executed for heresy and three for having spoken in favour 



RELIGION IN THE STATE 201 

of the Pope.^ Viewed from the distance of centuries, his 
actions seem due to the forceful energy of a monarch who 
with exalted notions of his own power, was unable to shake 
off the medieval scholastic training he had received. His 
idea of the state was that of a prince of the Renaissance. 
His conception of the church was that of a pope of the 
Middle Ages, save that he had substituted himself for 
the pope. 

At the beginning of his reign, he impressed people 
by the zeal of his orthodoxy, at the end by the rapid 
shifts of his innovations. But his faith always remained 
an official doctrine. Whether orthodox, or in revolt, it 
never departed from the fixed observances. Church rule 
and civil rule were only different forms of the same organ- 
ism. No such mysticism ever swayed him as made his 
great contemporary Charles V abandon the crown for 
monastic seclusion. 

The acquiescence which Henry VIII met with, was due 
less to indifference than to religious interest. Paradoxi- 
cal as may appear, it was the keen interest in theolog- 
ical matters which allowed Henry VIII to effect his rev- 
olution. The relics of Lollardry and Wyclifism, never 
quite dead, caused men to be dissatisfied with the condi- 
tions in the Church without, however, attaching discon- 
tent to any tangible method of reform. Even the orthodox 
felt that something was wrong. Erasmus lamented the 
dullards who expounded theology. Colet refused to kiss 
the relics of St. Thomas. A feeling of unrest was in the air. 

Such indignation became the groundwork for the seeth- 
ing shapeless movement which then stirred the English 
nation. When this attacked abuses, or made its appeal 
to reason, higher circles discerned advantage to their 
greed. The diffusion of education and of printed books 
allowed the masses for the first time to read, and aroused 
from below a deep and continuous stream of religious 
feeling which often puzzled those on high, uncertain 
whether the wiser policy was to ignore, direct, or to sup- 



202 TUDOR IDEALS 

press this. Forces long pent up, suddenly came to the 
surface. While Englishmen evolved no original doctrine 
they responded to the succession of new religious ideas 
which then came out of Germany and of Switzerland. 

The vices of the church in the early part of the Sixteenth 
Century, have been immensely exaggerated. But what 
is not an exaggeration is that it presented an immobile 
element unwilling to take into consideration the strength 
of the new forces growing up around it. Between the 
vague discontent of the orthodox, and the violent criticism 
of those in revolt, there was room for every shade of opin- 
ion. For a time it seemed as if anything might happen 
under the plea of making Christianity return to its primi- 
tive creed. ^ 

Henry VIII provided the leadership around which such 
dissatisfaction could cluster. A mind less scholastically 
orthodox than his, might have alarmed the people by the 
daring of his innovations and alienated them from the 
throne. A spirit less resolute would have been reconciled 
to Rome, and allowed the rift of reform to sever the na- 
tion. It was Henry VIITs greatness to thoroughly under- 
stand his people, less by conscious effort than by his po- 
litical instinct of representation, and to make his own 
religious evolution precede by little that of the English 
race. When he nationalized the faith, he was carrying out 
the inarticulate wish of the great majority of his people 
desirous to preserve the essentials of their creed, and in a 
moment of growing national consciousness, no less anxious 
for riddance of the hated vestiges of foreign intervention. 
The king helped to form and to express the national will 
to a degree which few elected leaders have ever succeeded 
in doing. 

The quarrel with Rome was therefore based less on 
doctrine than on nationality. The people realized that 
something was amiss and vaguely associated this with the 
foreigner. The king was popular because instinctively 
the people felt that he expressed their own desires, and 



RELIGION IN THE STATE 203 

their welfare was bound up with his greatness. They re- 
mained content to have him mould their spiritual fortunes, 
and to think and believe with him. The seeming indiffer- 
ence to faith during the first half of the century, and the 
meekness with which the royal example was followed, arose 
largely from the widespread belief in the spiritual su- 
premacy of the sovereign. The stability of achievement 
rested on general consent, expressed far more by a keen 
popular interest which found its leader in the prince, than 
by the indifference of a facile acquiescence. 

Where a religion is universal there is little occasion for 
intolerance. Before Luther Rome could be liberal. It is 
only when revolt begins that this engenders the spirit of 
persecution. Feeling, however, has its own interior laws, 
and martyrdom requires preparation and an exaltation 
which is rarely the product of a brief time. To every idea 
can be traced a growth and a rhythm. Martyrs are there- 
fore hardly ever found in the beginning of a movement. 
Nearly always it requires a second generation to raise these 
to the necessary pitch of enthusiasm. As with the Lol- 
lards, early believers had begun by abjuring their heresies 
for which, later, the humblest were glad to die; men 
recanted under Henry, who afterward perished cheerfully 
at the stake. Example was necessary to rouse the degree 
of their fervour. 

To those who preserved the ancient faith amid risk and 
danger all honour is due. It acted as a solace to many. 
Much of the best writing of the Sixteenth Century was 
devotional and now seems without interest, but it is impos- 
sible to read Fisher's simple and pure English without 
being moved by the depth of his feeling. His ** Spiritual 
Consolation" written for his sister Elizabeth at the time 
when he lay a prisoner in the Tower under sentence of 
death, contains rare literary beauty as well as religious sen- 
timent. On the Roman side, a few like More and Fisher, 
and the Monks of Charterhouse, possessed the strength of 
soul to suffer for their conscience. Yet the majority of 



204 TUDOR IDEALS 

those who later went courageously to their death had to 
be buoyed up by the spectacle of the first martyrs before 
they could feel sufficiently fortified. Such was the case 
of Father Forest who, after he had begun teaching his 
penitents to perjure themselves, afterward sought death in 
expiation. 

In a period of such swift change men could not be sure 
of their conviction and passed through an evolution ot 
conscience before they became ready to die. The sudden- 
ness of transformations began by reacting on character 
through facilitating a certain elasticity which later again 
hardened. Princess Mary had signed a letter against all 
her convictions, recognizing Henry VIII as supreme head 
of the Church, disavowing papal authority and declaring 
her mother's marriage incestuous and herself illegitimate. 
Elizabeth as princess simulated devotion to the Catholic 
creed so long as her sister reigned. 

Master Bilney, whom Latimer greatly admired, when 
first charged with heresy had been induced by his friends 
to recant. At Cambridge "he was in such an anguish and 
agony so that nothing did him good." Later feeling the 
old fervour once more, he went cheerfully to the stake.^ 

The courage of a young woman like Anne Askew in 
suffering torture and martyrdom for her faith lent strength 
to the Protestant cause.^ Latimer himself had frequent 
recourse to subterfuge in overmatching the bishops who 
were seeking to trap him into heresy. On one occasion he 
changed the sermon when noticing a bishop entering his 
church, while on another he overheard a scribe taking 
down his answers from behind the arras.^ His own piety 
ended by winning victory over the temptation to recede. 
"The highest promotion that God can bring his unto in 
this life is to suffer for his truth, . . . and one suffering 
for the truth turneth more than a thousand sermons." ^° 
With less fire than Savonarola, his spirit proved as heroic 
in the more homely garment which then enveloped Eng- 
lish faith. 



RELIGION IN THE STATE 205 

When even the staunchest had wavered it is not sur- 
prising, that with Mary's accession, the great mass of the 
nation acquiesced in a return to the ancient creed. Not 
all had the courage or conviction to face the terrible 
ordeal. Sir John Cheke despite his ardent Protestantism 
recanted in the presence of the stake, and expressed his 
willingness to obey Queen Mary's laws and other orders 
of religion. Typical of the multitude, is the anonymous 
writer who describes the queen's triumphal entry with 
King Philip into London, and Cardinal Pole's speech on 
the restoration of Catholicism. He relates how with many 
others he regretted his own past conduct and repents for 
his religious sins, determining to make amends in hence- 
forth practicing the "most holy Catholic faith." 

The reformation pendulum had swung too far under 
Edward VI not to make welcome a return to the old reli- 
gion. Men were ready to restore the Roman creed, but in- 
disposed to give back the ancient Church lands. The ideas 
of the English Reformation, just as later the ideas of the 
French Revolution, triumphed largely because self-inter- 
est committed to their support the most active element 
in the population. 

Although the English mind rarely found interest in 
theological subtleties, the middle of the century with the 
violent alternations between Edward and Mary, brought 
to a head the religious question on both sides. The prep- 
aration in fortitude had been achieved and henceforth 
intensity of conviction was displayed more frequently than 
under Henry VIII. The Catholics, especially after their 
brief return to power, were to concentrate in a manner 
which did honour to their conscience but deprived them of 
hopes of advancement. Amid much general flexibility 
one admires the attitude of the Marian bishops who, on 
Elizabeth's accession refused to take the oath of supremacy 
after her Protestant leanings became apparent, although 
it meant their destitution and subsequent imprisonment. 

The Catholic nobles showed more concern for their posi- 



2o6 TUDOR IDEALS 

tion. At a meeting of the Knights of the Garter in 
April, 1 56 1, Lord Sussex suggested that as a body, they 
should recommend the queen to marry Lord Robert Dud- 
ley the future Leicester. Catholics like Montagu and 
Arundel, and even a waverer like Norfolk, opposed the sug- 
gestion although it was known that Dudley had promised 
to restore the ancient faith. They preferred that Cathol- 
icism suffer rather than that an inferior among themselves 
be advanced. 

Elizabeth herself was of necessity a Protestant for to 
have been otherwise was to proclaim her illegitimacy and 
question her own authority. Though Pope Pius IV of- 
fered to confirm her title he could not affect the circum- 
stances of her birth. Her religion was therefore prejudged 
and if she flirted with Rome until secure in her position, 
she did so in a manner which reflected greater credit on 
her diplomatic skill than on her honesty. Although too 
much of her age not to be fond of theology, Elizabeth 
stood for the new spirit born of the Renaissance which 
subordinated religion to the state. 

Her own mind was naturally but little intolerant. Her 
view of religion was not far from the one expressed by a 
contemporary, who wrote that the prince ought more than 
others "to seem a worshipper of God" as his subjects 
would therefore dread less to suffer injustice at his hands; 
quoting the opinion of the ancients on religion as being 
a necessary element of the commonwealth and of use to 
mankind. ^^ 

Toward the end of her reign Queen Elizabeth told the 
French Ambassador, de Maisse, that if princes in Christ- 
endom had the necessary good will and resolution, it would 
be an easy matter to settle all differences in religion for 
there was only one Christ and one faith, and all the rest 
were trifles. -^^ The successive steps by which from the 
date of her accession she gradually substituted the re- 
formed creed for the Roman were carried out with extreme 
caution and as imperceptibly as possible. No alteration 



RELIGION IN THE STATE 207 

was at first permitted in the public services of religion, and 
it was only by her selection of advisers and the exclusion of 
devout Catholics, that the tendency toward reform grad- 
ually became apparent. ^^ She attempted to treat religion 
as part of the state but without fanaticism, for the English 
people, religious by instinct and tradition, were not big- 
oted and refrained from the excesses often committed on 
the Continent. 

"There are three notable differences of religion in the 
land, the two extremes whereof are the Papist and the Pu- 
ritan, and the religious Protestant obtaining the mean." ^^ 

Camden explained Elizabeth's zeal for one religion on 
the ground that if diversity were tolerated it might be 
an incentive to continual strife among a people so war- 
like as the English. ^^ Such was the political aspect of a 
complex and delicate situation. It was the merit of 
Elizabeth to have taken a middle course without any of 
her father's exaggerations. The greatness of an individ- 
ual in thought or action, nearly always emanates from 
the relation he bears to the spirit of the age. At a time of 
confused and opposite tendencies, her greatness was to 
steer the nation so as to formulate the religious desires 
which expressed the wishes of most of her people and re- 
sponded best to their spiritual instincts. 

A definite religious ideal was kept in view as the chief 
goal of the state, on the ground that princes exposed them- 
selves to blame who had only in mind the consideration 
of temporal benefits and "pretend to no higher end than 
wealth, peace and justice among their subjects. "^^ _ 

Richard Hooker was to be the apologist of the estab- 
lished order. In his survey of the civil aspects of religion 
he adopted the view of a man of the world, rescuing the 
occasional lack of elevation of his ideas by the rare beauty 
of his style. To him, as to Elizabeth, it seemed out of 
question for Church and Government to exist in a Chris- 
tian state separate and distinct. "There is not any man 
of the Church of England but the same man is also a mem- 



2o8 TUDOR IDEALS 

ber of the commonwealth; nor any man a member of the 
commonwealth which is not also of the Church of Eng- 
land." ^^ Religion and justice were inseparable, neither able 
to exist without the other. Upholding the spiritual aspects 
of the state, he brought out the authority of the prince 
whose power was supreme to command even in matters of 
Christian religion. By such reasoning, men conscientiously 
changed their creed in response to their sovereign's desires. 
The Sixteenth Century presents the strange anomaly, on 
the one hand of the greatest suppleness in faith, coupled 
on the other with the spirit of martyrdom existing on both 
sides Roman and Puritan. 

Hooker frankly steered a middle course. He appreci- 
ated the twofold opposition against the supreme power 
of the prince in matters of faith. The catholic because 
their creed rested on the Pope, the Calvinist and Zwing- 
lian, because it belonged in every national church to the 
clergy there assembled. In his opinion princes receive it 
by divine right, though he admits that God nowhere says 
that kings should or should not have it. Quoting the 
Scripture that "no man can serve two masters" his con- 
clusion is that as the Kings of England can have no peers 
within their own realm, no civilian nor ecclesiastic under 
them can have coercive power when such power would 
make that person so far superior to his own superior. 

Hooker expounded the Tudor doctrine of lay suprem- 
acy over the church, vested in the person of the ruler. 
This fitted in with the English spirit of the time unable 
to brook the foreign interference of the Roman faith, yet 
seeking a central authority, and therefore arming the 
crown with spiritual as well as with temporal weapons. 
Lastly, this view contained a moderation from Papist and 
Puritan extreme, a respect for law on the part of the sover- 
eign, a commonsense view of religion in its practical as- 
pect toward life, which took cognizance of facts rather 
than of dogma, and as such was peculiarly English. At a 
time when fierce polemics were raging over church cere- 



RELIGION IN THE STATE 209 

monials, he wrote "whether it be not a kind of taking 
God's name in vain to debase religion with such frivolous 
disputes, a sin to bestow time and labour about them."^^ 

Hooker never realized that any other than the established 
order of society was possible. In his belief, there was al- 
most divine sanction for the nobility and he says with 
unconscious servility, "We are not to dream in this case 
of any platform which bringeth equally high and low unto 
parish churches, ... so repugnant to the majesty and 
greatness of English nobility. "^^ The authority of the 
church implied the authority of the crown, the nobility, 
the universities and all established orders. 

Such was the theory of the English church which was 
to represent the spiritual needs of the nation. Jewell 
stated it with even greater vigor. "For this is our doc- 
trine, that every soul of what calling soever he be — be he 
monk, be he preacher, be he prophet, be he apostle — 
ought to be subject to Kings and magistrates. "^° This 
doctrine although creating a national church left a clergy 
which in its earlier history had not yet acquired the sense 
of its own dignity. The servility of some of its higher 
prelates is not among the bright pages of the time. Ayl- 
mer the Bishop of London could write to Sir Christopher 
Hatton — "I preach without spirit. I trust not of God 
but of my sovereign which is God's lieutenant and so 
another God unto me." ^^ 

In every age public men have less initiated the prevail- 
ing forces than they have placed themselves astride of 
these. Strong movements irrespective of their nature or 
direction, require roots, and these are rarely found on the 
surface of the soil where leadership becomes conspicuous. 
The Sixteenth Century presents the paradox "of vital 
forces which affected the lives of men and drove them 
toward sacrifice and martyrdom yet often swayed in turn 
by sheer opportunists themselves indifferent in matters 
of faith who utilized religion as a political force. 

At court there was no quarrel about religious ques- 



2IO TUDOR IDEALS 

tions because no one reasoned about them. Lyly could 
deplore such lack of interest/^ but it was symptomatic. 
Especially those returned from Italy were accused of 
regarding faith solely from the point of view of a politi- 
cal expedient. 

It is impossible to divine from Shakespeare that the 
Reformation had taken place, and if one judged only from 
his plays the Roman faith might still have been supreme. 
Yet among the people a healthy and somewhat crude 
religious feeling kept strong. There was a prevalent 
belief that the defeat of the Armada was caused by divine 
intercession. Protestantism gave even a religious sanction 
to the freebooters who carried out their piratical enter- 
prises on the Spanish Main.^^ 



V. TOLERANCE AND PERSECUTION 

Wolsey's dying advice to the king had been to keep a 
watchful eye on the Lutherans/ yet in the twenty years 
of his administration there was far less persecution for 
heresy than during the three of More's Chancellorship.^ 
Few things are more remarkable, than how the kindest of 
men who preached tolerance, appreciated the merits of 
Lutheranism and denounced the evils of persecution where 
out of "the ashes of one heretic sprlngeth up many"^ 
should himself have become a violent persecutor. 

The paradox is best explained by the dualism between a 
system of laws inherited from the Middle Ages and a new 
spirit of tolerance born in the Renaissance. As a jurist. 
More felt obliged to apply the old statutes enacted against 
heresy under Richard II and Henry IV, while as a human- 
ist he expressed the feeling for tolerance so soon to be 
checked by fierce religious hatreds. 

The early days of the Sixteenth Century displayed a 
more liberal spirit than later became possible when poli- 
tics under religious guise aroused human passion into vio- 
lence. James Bainham, a barrister of the Middle Temple, 
asserted in 1531, that "if a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen, do 
trust in God and keep his law he is a good Christian man," 
an opinion for which he was afterward burned. Starkey, 
with his Italian culture, takes the same broad view. Jews, 
Saracens, Turks and Moors so long as they observe their 
own laws which are the best they know, "seeing the infinite 
goodness of God hath no less made them after his own 
image and form, than he hath made the Christian Man," 
nor are they to be damned so long as they live in accord- 
ance with the law of nature.^ Even in Luther he had 
found good, saying that "He and his disciples be not so 
wicked and foolish that in all things they err." ^ 



212 TUDOR IDEALS 

Not everyone believed in intolerance; John Olde asked 
the question when Christ had ever compelled anyone to 
come to his religion "with imprisonment or with fire" and 
not only condemned persecution but went so far as to say 
that "no man should die for his faith." ^ 

The downfall of Protector Somerset who had refused to 
persecute and repealed the old statutes against heresy, 
brought an end to all hope of milder rule. Passions were 
violently aroused and even those whose inclinations were 
mild found they had to range themselves on the side of 
persecution. The currents of progress are never able long 
to pursue their course unchecked, and the more they run 
ahead of an age the more certain they are to be coun- 
tered, Somerset's tolerance had been individual and was 
little in touch with the ideas of the great mass of the popu- 
lation always inclined to welcome the use of force as the 
sign of strong rule. 

The efforts of the crown were directed toward drawing 
to itself what remained of the ancient allegiance formerly 
given to Rome and enforcing this obedience with the cus- 
tomary means practiced by authority whenever it has found 
itself resisted. To blame this as cruel is to misread the 
spirit of that age. The suffering imposed may have 
touched human chords in a few, but the method adopted 
was in keeping with the current usage of authority. The 
right of the crown to enter into the religious belief of its 
subjects was hardly questioned and even the Catholics 
who were its victims, seem, as a rule, to have been more 
intent in changing the monarch on the throne as in the case 
of Elizabeth, than in seeking to modify the point of view 
which sanctioned their persecution. Only occasionally 
those who suffered felt inclined to liberal views, and Sir 
Thomas Copley writing Burleigh to complain about the 
seizure of his possessions, cited the example of Germany 
where princes were well served by "their subjects of 
whatsoever religion." ^ As a victim he could place religion 
on a broad foundation of tolerance. 



TOLERANCE AND PERSECUTION 213 

Among rulers the problem of tolerance was oftener one 
t)f opportunism than of conviction. Bacon when making 
suggestions to restore order in Ireland advocated a policy 
to recover the hearts of the people and recommended a 
wide religious liberty in order to deprive the rebel 
leaders of the plea that they were defending the Catholic 
faith. Toleration of religion seemed to him a policy of 
absolute necessity/ although the principal cities were to 
be exempted from this measure. 

Bacon's view was that of a rationalist who saw in reli- 
gion a matter of policy. The great problem of government 
was then to impose discipline in questions of faith 
lest the denial of spiritual authority lead to political 
rebellion. Even a bigot like Philip II who would not allow 
Chaloner, the British Envoy at Madrid, to read the Bible, 
and forced him to abstain during Lent, was ready enough 
to admit compromise and tolerance in England where he 
preferred the country Protestant and neutral to Catholic ■ 
and French. 

On the Continent, ideas of toleration had at first been 
current. Cardinal Granville writing from the Low Coun- 
tries quoted leaders in the Netherlands like Flores de 
Montmorency, and the Marquis de Bergues, who openly 
said it was not permissible to shed blood for religious 
motives and wished to know what scriptural sanction 
existed for the execution of heretics. He himself replied 
to a lady who asked his advice regarding the treatment of 
heretics on her estate, that for those converted there 
should be no punishment, while it was not advisable to 
proceed against the hardened for they might later see the 
light.9 

In France the seeds of the future Politiques were 
scattered broadcast. George Buchanan lived in the 
intimacy of Marshal de Brissac who was known as the foe 
of heretics, without this appearing anomalous. Writers 
like Cognet urged the need for tolerance, and cited that 
of the Turk for the Christian conscience, and of Italian 



214 TUDOR IDEALS 

princes for Jews.^° La Noue's " Political Discourses" then 
translated into English contain one long argument against 
persecution. Even Rome responded to such ideas. The 
Cardinal of Ferrara who came to England as an unofficial 
envoy of the Vatican and whom Elizabeth received as a 
Prince of the House of Este, expressed himself freely on the 
folly of not associating with fellow Christians because of 
religious differences." This may not have reflected his 
true opinion but it did his line of policy. Tolerance might 
be wise politically and states like Germany, Poland, 
Bohemia and Hungary where it was practiced were held up 
as examples. ^^ Unfortunately such belief was not deeply 
enough grounded to withstand the onslaught of contrary 
ideas. 

The decay of any system is usually hastened by a large 
indulgence, which renders it sympathetic and opens the 
gate to new ideas breaking their way through the crust of 
the old. This was true of conditions so utterly diverse as 
prevailed in the Medieval Church of the Fifteenth Century, 
or the French Monarchy on the eve of the Revolution. In 
each instance the plan of reforms prepared from within, or 
by those bred in the old system to which they remain at- 
tached, after receiving an apparent welcome are suddenly 
countered by other forces reactionary or radical, which 
mould the movement in accordance with their strength. 
Moderation failed in England in the Sixteenth Century 
as it has always failed when a tempest has not yet spent 
its force. The reason why a statesman so moderate as 
Elizabeth attached herself to the more radical Protestant 
party was only because she felt that the real strength of 
her people lay there. 

The Roman conception of a universal church left its 
inheritance to Protestants in the aim for a uniform creed. 
Though many bore "honest papists" no ill will the opinion 
was prevalent that both Catholics and Puritans were 
"traitors." The spirit was the same whatever the ritual, 
for on both sides men acted in the same way as soon as 



TOLERANCE AND PERSECUTION 215 

open warfare broke out. Whether in the Low Countries 
where Alva's policy to stamp out heresy ruined the land or 
in Prance where the tongues of Protestants were cut off be- 
fore execution to avoid "blaspheming," a wave of barbar- 
ism was unchained in Europe under the name of religion. 
The worst feature was its general popularity. Even in 
England whatever later apologists have said, Parliament 
neither expressed disapproval of Mary's persecution of 
Protestants nor of Elizabeth's persecution of Catholics. 
Only here and there a few wise minds like Castelnau could 
remark that the effect of persecution was to increase the 
zeal of the persecuted. 

From which side did the spirit of persecution first come.^ 
The query is idle for the Middle Ages had persecuted 
heresy and handed down its methods as a principle of 
government. Because the Renaissance gave birth to an 
ideal of tolerance, because a few elect responded to this, 
the vast majority of the nation remained indifferent or 
opposed. The spirit of persecution became a recognized 
dogma of government. 

After the Pope's ill judged excommunication of Eliza- 
beth, the Queen with greater political tact issued a proc- 
lamation announcing that she did not intend to enter into 
men's consciences so long as they observed her laws in 
open deeds. 

All Elizabeth demanded was outward religious con- 
formity, for it was her boast that she opened no windows 
on men's souls. She insisted on no change of faith. Her 
policy was thus halfway between tolerance and intolerance 
and formed a link between the two. She was as tolerant 
of belief as she was intolerant of conduct and by so doing 
came nearest to carrying out the wishes of the majority 
of the English people. 

Her own persecutions did not begin until 1577, when 
Cuthbert Mayne the first Catholic missionary was exe- 
cuted. On the Continent Catholics forgetting all about 
their own intolerance professed indignation at this and said 



2i6 TUDOR IDEALS 

that persecution in England was denounced by heretics, 
Turks and Infidels. ^^ A picture of the cruelties suffered 
by English .Catholics was hung at Notre 'Dame in Paris 
where it was only removed by the king's order at the in- 
stance of the British ambassador. 

Intolerance was a satisfaction accorded to public opin- 
ion. The pressure exerted on the queen for the religious 
persecution of the Catholics, arose mainly from Puritan 
groups, for unleavened democracy is often more intol- 
erant than autocracy. The response of the crown to 
popular opinion in the latter part of the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury came in satisfying such demands as had been imposed 
by the spirit of persecution. The Virgin Queen herself 
found popularity in the harsh measures her government 
, took against those who did not conform. Cardinal Allen 
could write of the missionaries yearly going out from the 
seminaries at Rheims and Rome, to Turkey and the Indies 
with no more danger than to England. "They are sent 
to the Heathen to tell them there is no salvation without 
Christ: they are sent to the English to tell them there is 
no salvation without the Catholic Church. Whether they 
die for the one or for the other, all is one-matter to them." ^^ 

Yet many asked to be sent to England with only 
the prospect of death before them. The history of Cath- 
olic martyrs has no place here, but their courage and de- 
votion deserves the highest praise. It was honoured even 
by its enemies. Edmund Spenser pays a sympathetic 
tribute to the courage of Catholic priests in Ireland who 
came from Rome and from Spain, " by long toil and dan- 
gerous transit hither, when they know peril of death 
awaiteth them and no reward or riches is to be found," 
contrasting their zeal with the idleness of the Anglican 
clergy. ^^ Mary Stuart could write to Mendoza in Nov., 
1584, that he should go ahead in his plot without any re- 
gard to her own personal danger, for she would gladly 
give up her life if she could thereby obtain 'the triumph 
of the Catholic cause, and was ready to see her own son 



TOLERANCE AND PERSECUTION 217 

dispossessed from his right to the throne because of his 
heresy, preferring the "welfare of the church to the ag- 
grandizement of my posterity. " ^® 

Statecraft imposed wilful cruelty. Lord. Burleigh ad- 
vised the queen to keep down the Catholics not on religious 
grounds but as a matter of policy. If these were granted 
greater liberties they would not be satisfied and would 
think such tolerance proceeded from fear. To content 
them would be to discontent faithful subjects. ^^ This 
was the true reason. Burleigh had no wish to persecute 
Catholics, but the spirit of persecution rested on popular 
approval. The masses wanted it and the kindly treatment 
of Catholics would have dissatisfied them. They 
demanded that Elizabeth persecute the Catholics. A 
sovereign so mindful of popularity as Elizabeth would 
otherwise never have resorted to this. 

Burleigh warned against going too far which led to 
massacre and therefore to acts of despair, advising the 
queen to make use of Catholic aid in the same way as 
Frederick II did with Saracens. By modifying the rigour 
of the oath to demanding readiness to bear arms against 
all foreign princes invading England, he believed that the 
adherence of non-Catholics could be obtained, and if any 
priests refused to take this and were punished it could not 
be said that they suffered for religion. A few Catholics 
wrote to urge such tolerance, offering the example of 
France under Henry IV, of Poland where no one's con- 
science was forced, and of Germany where those of dif- 
ferent creed lived side by side; men's bodies could be 
driven but not their minds." 

The astonishing fact remains that while the French 
King was massacring Huguenots and Elizabeth perse- 
cuting Catholics both continued to be friends. The queen 
foreseeing that her persecution of Catholics might be in- 
voked against her urged her ambassador in Paris to reply 
that the rebellion in the North which had just been put 
down, was only outwardly coloured with religion, but that 



2i8 TUDOR IDEALS 

the Pope had made treason and obedience to his bulls syn- 
onymous. In spite of the heat of religious controversies 
the marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou 
was regarded as desirable. Staunch Protestants looked 
upon it as "honourable, convenient, profitable and need- 
ful." As the French prince was only a moderate Papist 
and asked for the freedom of his own conscience and of 
his *' suites" it was felt that such a marriage would be con- 
ducive to tolerance in religion. A letter of Burleigh to 
Walsingham suggested, however, that in case the marriage 
did not take place, religion be given as the reason. It was 
often the pretence paraded to the world. 

The long negotiations were, perhaps, never meant to 
be taken too seriously. They reveal a perfunctory atti- 
tude toward religion as being far more a matter of the 
state than of faith, although the queen declared it absurd 
for herself and her husband to celebrate contrary beliefs 
when this was not tolerated among her subjects. On the 
duke's side it was remarked by his representative that 
he had religious convictions which were a good thing par- 
ticularly in the case of princes "who have no other bridle 
to stay them from evil." ^^ The massacre of St Barthol- 
omew brought about a keener desire for intolerance in 
England. Men like Sandys the Bishop of London wrote 
to Burleigh advocating the immediate execution of Mary 
of Scotland and the removal of Catholics from the vicin- 
ity of the queen. 

Elizabeth's personal feelings in the direction of toler- 
ance made contemporaries accuse her of religious indiffer- 
ence. If she refrained from carrying out her preferences, 
such hesitation was due to a characteristic caution which 
listened to her subjects' wishes. The queen's ideas influ- 
enced by those of her environment fluctuated with condi- 
tions. Methods of expression though more restricted than 
public opinion is to-day were articulate enough. Eliza- 
beth's sagacity came in understanding when such clamour 
had to be listened to and when it was to be curbed. With 



TOLERANCE AND PERSECUTION 219 

few personal convictions save about her own prerogatives, 
she always modified her preferences in accordance with 
the pressure of the moment and showed herself tolerant 
or intolerant as conditions demanded. Granting the facts 
imposed by the peculiar circumstances of her birth, her 
policy was one of religious opportunism with a personal 
preference for tolerance in advance of her age. Her readi- 
ness to concede freedom of conscience if not freedom of 
worship marked a considerable advance, and paved the 
way for future toleration. It was as far as the conserva- 
tive liberalism of Queen Elizabeth's advisers thought wise 
to go. In an age of conspiracy it was difficult to be rid of 
the idea that men of a minority faith were inimical to the 
welfare of the state. Although there might be no direct 
challenge of supremacy yet indirectly even religion "divi- 
deth in a sort and draweth from the state. "^^ 

Moderation was generally the rule among the upper 
classes, and Essex said openly that in his opinion no one 
should suffer death because of religion. But there exists a 
kind of Gresham's law in popular hatred, and the spread of 
the Catholic reaction on the Continent provoked inevitable 
reprisals in England. It is only necessary to read such nar- 
ratives as that of Edward Underbill "the hot gospeller" 
always eager to persecute when not himself persecuted,^" 
for he never questioned Queen Mary's right to keep down 
the new faith. Stubbes also complained that Catholics in 
England were treated with overmuch leniency and even in 
prison lived there like young princes. ^^ A Puritan griev- 
ance against the bishops was due to the fact of these pray- 
ing that all men without exception be saved and that all 
travellers by sea be preserved, Turks not excepted.^^ 
After the Moorish ambassadors received audience of the 
queen, they could not proceed to the Levant as they wished 
"for our merchants nor mariners will not carry them in 
Turkey because they think it a matter odious and 
scandalous to the work to be too friendly or familiar 
with infidels." 23 



VI. PURITANISM 

The few pages given here to Puritanism are merely in- 
tended to bridge over what would otherwise be a gap and 
call attention to an omission rather than seek to fill it. 

Puritanism as a conscious political force did not show 
its head until later in the century, but Puritanism as an 
inward religious feeling early realized its expression. Be- 
fore the scission from Rome, the hope had been widely en- 
tertained of effecting reform from within. At the Court of 
Francis I, as in that of Navarre, and at the Court of Henry 
VIII, a religious fervour had been prompted by the new 
learning. Wyatt's Puritan tastes were revealed in his par- 
aphrases of the Psalms breathing a spirit of repentance 
for sin, and hope in the mercy of God whose kingdom lies 
within the human heart. The Lutheran doctrine of the 
importance of inner faith instead of outward good works 
echoes in his lines 

"Then seek no more out of thyself to find 
The thing that thou hast sought so long before; 
For thou shall feel it sticking in thy mind." 

Surrey's paraphrases of Ecclesiastes and the Psalms, ex- 
press the same idea and makes one doubt the jesting inter- 
pretation given to his adventure in shooting bolts through 
London tradesmen's windows. 

If Puritanism had remained confined to the Court it 
would never have become the active force into which it 
developed. Oddly enough its early history presents an 
analogy to that of Renaissance culture. This, too, after 
meeting with its first welcome at Court was unable to 
develop there. The king's vicinity which provided an 
admirable threshold for new ideas, was both too occupied 



PURITANISM 221 

and too limited in its interests to extend to these more 
than their original welcome. The charm of novelty acting 
on keen intelligence favoured such reception, but only 
gave ideas their first start. Beyond, they had to find their 
own way through the nation, and their diffusion occurred 
in proportion as they fitted themselves to its interest. 

Puritanism by its early welcome, acquired a literary 
flavour which remained associated with it and preserved a 
certain grace to what otherwise often descended into ugly 
intolerance. Its organization arose through quite dif- 
ferent circumstances. During the Marian persecutions 
when English reformers had to flee abroad they found 
in Switzerland and along the Rhine, Church governments 
which were those of small independent republics. The 
fact that the city government in towns like Geneva and 
Zurich had become theocracies offered examples not lost 
on English Puritans when they returned to their own 
country. 

The Reformation by itself was insufficient to destroy 
the medieval tradition of a clergy who were spiritual 
nobles more concerned with administration than with 
their pastoral duties. Latimer had attacked them for 
neglecting these. "How many unlearned prelates have 
we now at this day . . . they hawk, they hunt, they 
card, they dice, they pastime in their prelacies."^ A 
levelling tendency aimed at real or supposed abuses, 
was then beginning to set in against the survival of cer- 
tain ceremonies inherited from the Roman ritual. The 
hierachy of the bishops was denounced for absenteeism 
and found themselves as much reviled for being a "hel- 
lish rabble" as had ever been the Roman bishops.^ 

The Reformation began by destroying the ecclesias- 
tical fabric of authority. In the early years of Eliz- 
abeth's reign the bishops felt uncertain about their posi- 
tion not knowing whether they were merely stop gaps to 
be swept away or kept as part of the new institutions. 
Elizabeth found utility in retaining them. The middle 



222 TUDOR IDEALS 

course she steered appealed to the majority of her people 
and saved them from excesses on either side. Catholicism 
represented tradition, but had the queen yielded to the 
blandishments of Rome the breach from her subjects 
would have been too great. Involuntarily the moderate 
reformers would have turned to Puritanism with the likeli- 
hood of a violent clash between the two extremes. The 
sagacity of the queen's course lay in the gradual break 
with the Vatican, which gave the time to affirm her own 
authority and prevent civil war. The requirements of 
conservative stability made her prefer a doctrine distant 
alike from Papist and from Puritan. 

Elizabeth was then endeavouring to rebuild the struc- 
ture of the ancient church without its Roman head. The 
Episcopal Apostolic succession was utilized to strengthen 
the principle of authority on which the new national 
church reposed, and a divine right was invoked for this^hier- 
archy by Richard Bancroft. The queen's support of the 
Anglican Church was in line with her traditional conser- 
vatism, whereas the Puritan effort had been directed " to 
deprive the queen of her authority and give it to the peo- 
ple." Much as Puritanism stood for tyranny in its atti- 
tude toward the private life of the individual, it stood also 
for political liberty. The early characteristics of the Pu- 
ritans were, however, far different from what they later 
became. When they first appeared, Leicester and Essex, 
both of whom were sufficiently self-indulgent, protected 
them at Court, though if Camden is to be believed, many 
noblemen favoured the movement because they hoped by 
its means to obtain more of the wealth of the Church.^ 

Job Throckmorton, the supposed Martin Marprelate, 
was no austere figure but one who took pleasure in life. 
Arthur Golding, the translator of Ovid, was strongly im- 
bued with the Puritan spirit and tried to conciliate his 
paganism by proving Ovid to have been a disciple of 
Pythagoras. 

Persecution and the execution of Brownists and Ana- 



PURITANISM 223 

baptists, brought out the austere side of Puritanism. 
The more human aspects of the early adherents were dis- 
carded for a rigid discipline until their name became a 
byword for the peculiar grimness attached to it. They 
were regarded by their enemies as "dissembling hypo- 
crites." Their nasal twang was disliked. Sir Andrew 
Aguecheek loathed them. It was said of the Puritan that 
though he loved God with all his soul he hated his neigh- 
bour with all his heart.^ Their enemies declared that the 
Puritan preachers won the peoples' affection by drawing 
attention to the faults of those who filled the "higher 
callings" and obtaining a reputation for virtue by their 
readiness to reprove the sins of others.^ It was said that 
the triumph of Puritanism would mean the overthrow of 
learning, for the Puritan regarded degrees as only vain- 
glory and enforced a permanent equality among ministers. 
They brought a new spirit into English life, which un- 
pleasant in its manifestations was to become a forerunner 
of British democracy.^ 

The Puritan hostility to the bishops and wish for each 
church to choose its own pastor seemed anarchy to many. 
To King James' maxim "no Bishops, no King" Harring- 
ton added "no King, no nobility, no gentry." ^ Elizabeth 
persecuted them not for religion, but as a danger to the 
state. The Puritans clamoured for a liberty which they 
were unwilling to grant others. Their sombre spirituality 
appeared the same threat to the comfortable visions of 
the bishops as the spectre of socialism is to so many 
modern minds. 

Apart from its religious aspect, Puritanism represented 
the great levelling tendency which in more recent times 
has been known as democracy. Its struggle against the 
bishops was because these "made Mitred Lords." ^ Puri- 
tanism was the expression of the people seeking to find a 
spiritual government in closer touch with themselves. 
Hence it was opposed by all those who feared such tenden- 
cies. Bacon, for instance, found danger to the state in 



224 TUDOR IDEALS 

their arguments. The working force of Puritan democracy 
was still intolerant, roughshod, high-handed, and often 
unfair. Yet the beginnings of the fight for constitutional 
liberty under the Stuarts can be traced to the obscure 
attacks on the institutions of the English Church under 
Elizabeth. 

The hostility of Puritanism toward the stage has left a 
dark recollection among lovers of letters. The exuberance 
of the Renaissance spirit translated into the drama could 
only arouse feelings of hostility among those who felt an 
ascetic ideal. Nor was this peculiar to England. The 
popularity of the stage made many who were far from 
styling themselves Puritans, resent the idleness it pro- 
voked, as well as the immorality of its subject-matter.^ 
In England many divines preached against the stage, ^" 
while the attacks of the pamphleteers savagely attacked 
its immorality. Some tried to separate the good plays 
from the bad. To conform himself to Puritan leanings, 
Peele attempted to dramatize a biblical subject rendering 
into blank verse chapters from the Bible. Others like 
Fenton sharply distinguished between the ordinary drama 
and the plays of scholars written to reprove Vice and 
extol Virtue.-'^ 

Out of this clash between the opposing forces of Puri- 
tanism and love of life, the spirit of England was to 
develop. 



VII. FREE THOUGHT 

Scepticism was more prevalent in the Middle Ages than 
is supposed. Dante found atheists in hell, and the sporadic 
growth of anonymous heresies whose recollection is pre- 
served in the accusations of the Church, show that disbe- 
lief was far from infrequent. This was more true of the 
Continent and especially of Italy, than of England. The 
intellectual ferment was there less active, though during 
the Fifteenth Century curious manifestations of doubt 
appear in other matters than faith. In his preface to 
Malory, Caxton remarks that many believed King Arthur 
a myth and the books about him mere fables. 

Non-believers were far too prudent to leave public 
defence of their doubt, but the wide diffusion of ancient 
culture undoubtedly increased their numbers. William of 
Orange was commonly reputed an atheist, and Marshal 
Strozzi died as he had lived, refusing the proffered sacra- 
ments and with his last words declaring he would go the 
way of every one else for six thousand years. 

In England oddly enough a devout Catholic like More,^ 
was the first to mention the sceptics. In his "Utopia" 
the only exception he made to liberty of faith, was against 
the atheistic materialism whose sympathizers were to be 
debarred from office, on the ground that as they believe in 
nothing they would be prone to break laws they did not 
fear. More, even found means to reconcile to reason the 
difficulty about miracles, on the ground that though a 
miracle is impossible in nature it is possible to God.^ 
The hostility to Rome caused the doctrine of the Eucharist 
to be held up to ridicule in a spirit of coarse jest.^ The 
attempt to destroy the mystery was, however, anti-Catho- 
lic and had nothing in common with free thought. 

The atheist in the Sixteenth Century lives chiefly by 

225 



226 TUDOR IDEALS 

those who attacked him. Latimer, for instance, de- 
nounced the Epicureans who believe that "after this hfe 
there is neither hell nor heaven."^ Such opinions were al- 
leged to have been introduced by the Italianated English- 
man who found in religion only an instrument of govern- 
ment and regarded Christianity as a fable. "They make 
Christ and his Gospel only serve Civil policy . . . they 
mock the Pope; they rail on Luther." ^ Atheism became 
a word no longer unknown to plain Englishmen. 

Free thought was regarded as a plant of foreign growth. 
In an age when religious passion ran high, many openly 
declared that, whoever laid stress on religion was a fool 
and still greater if he gave up to it any of his wealth; 
but if he sacrificed his life he was stark mad.® The current 
of rationalism had been reinforced by classical example. 
Its precepts counselled caution for it was dangerous to 
advocate these openly. Their existence points to the 
difficulty of generalizing about an age or reading into it 
only one tendency without taking account of other factors. 
Some who entertained unorthodox views were deemed 
atheists, perhaps because they wished to lessen the im- 
portance of religion in the StatCj^^ though G. Cranmer 
writing to Hooker in 1598 denounced such "godless 
pohtics." ^ 

Queen Elizabeth herself was described as "an atheist"^ 
because of her reluctance to go to extremes. Her views 
can best be judged from the spirit of the negotiations with 
respect to the French marriage. While the queen cared 
nothing for the duke's conversion to the Church of Eng- 
land, she was at first insistent on his not having the mass 
said in his household and accompanying her to church. 
She would not press him, however, to any sudden change 
of religion as this might cause him to be reputed an 
atheist. ^° A possible claimant to the throne like Lord 
Derby, was accused of keeping his creed in darkness. 
"Some think him to be of all three religions and others of 
none." " It was questionable whether this opinion about 



FREE THOUGHT 227 

him was beneficial or not. In Scotland the Regent Moray- 
was accused of taking religion as a cloak to enrich himself 
with the church spoils. 

In an age of compulsory uniformity, the diffusion of free 
thought must have been wider than is often supposed. 
The accusation of atheism was a favourite charge. Leices- 
ter was accused of being "of no religion" ^^ and of finding 
advantage in all. Euphues' talk with Atheos suggests a 
wide agnosticism in the courtly circle. One Carleton, who 
wrote an essay on religion in England, divided its popula- 
tion into Papists, Atheists and Protestants declaring the 
third class the least numerous. ^^ Whoever differed in 
creed was at once accused of such godlessness. Thomas 
Cooper denounced the atheists who hated the bishops and 
who professed religion without caring about it.^^ In the 
Puritan camp John Penry spoke of the prevalence of athe- 
ism in Wales. ^^ A great deal of this supposed atheism was 
only the mildest doubt and did not deserve the violence of 
invective. Most scepticism remained a current without 
literary expression. 

Bacon while apparently confuting atheism, was not 
out of sympathy with the spirit of doubt. One of its few 
apologies is to be found in John Bate's *'The Portraiture of 
Hypocrisy" printed in 1589, with its dialogue between a 
Christian and an atheist who is left unconvinced. The 
atheist stands for Epicureanism, and his point of view is 
not unlike that of the modern agnostic who without know- 
ing what to believe yet leads a righteous life.^^. . . The 
writer's avowed purpose was to show the hypocrisy of 
so many Englishmen who think they have performed 
their duty if they go to church "for fashion's sake, hear 
a little and practise less." 

Hamlet remains the best type of Sixteenth Century ag- 
nosticism. Conforming outwardly, his doubt was intellec- 
tual and restrained. Open professions of scepticism 
were rare. A certain Richard Cholmeley who had once 
been in the service of the Council, organized a company 



228 TUDOR IDEALS 

of "atheists" who, it was said, professed blasphemous 
opinions and entertained subversive designs. Harriott 
the mathematician who had been with Raleigh, Matthew 
Royden the poet, Marlowe and Kyd were associated with 
this and the two latter were arrested by the government 
which took alarm at the spread of atheism. ^^ 

Marlowe's unbelief was notorious, though the trumped- 
up charges made against him by a hired ruffian in the 
attempt to institute a prosecution for blasphemy failed by 
their excess. But Dr Faustus declares: "Come I think 
Hell's a fable" and the belief in punishment in the after 
life fit for "old wives tales." 

In the "Jew of Malta" Machiavelli counts "religion but 
a childish toy" and in Tamburlaine, King Sigismund who 
has just sworn alliance on the Christ, attacks his late ally 
as soon as he is in difficulties because of not being bound 
to maintain faith with infidels. Marlowe though he es- 
caped the law, intentionally makes the pretence of religion 
an excuse for unrighteousness. Francis Kett, who had 
attended the same College at Cambridge, was burned at 
the stake for his unorthodox views about the Trinity 
and divinity of Christ. Benet College contained the seeds 
of scepticism, but Oxford also .was accused of being a cen- 
tre of free thought. ^^ 

The end of the Sixteenth Century witnessed a far wider 
diffusion of agnosticism than the beginning. The feeling 
against Raleigh was increased by the suspicion of his im- 
piety, for agnosticism was never a popular profession. ^^ 
Essex on the scaffold thanked God that he had never 
been an atheist or Papist, but in the arraignment against 
him it was said that his companions came from both 
categories. The association of such extremes is not to be 
taken too literally, but shows that any departure from 
respect for established authority was laid down either 
to atheism or papistry. The increased stability resting 
on strengthened foundations of order caused free opinion 
to be restrained. With a wild bohemian like Marlowe 



FREE THOUGHT 229 

full of youthful exuberance, it burst. With most others 
it was concealed behind outward conformity, though occa- 
sional evidences of doubt crop out. Sir Richard Barckley 
who professed belief, quoted the story of the Indian Chief 
who, hearing from De Soto that he was a Christian come to 
instruct savages in the knowledge of the law, replied " If 
thy God command thee to run over other men's coun- 
tries, robbing, burning, killing and omitting no kind of 
wickedness, we will tell you in a few words that we can 
neither beheve in him or his laws." ^o 



VIII. PACIFISM AND WAR 

An age which has left its record of horrors, also expressed 
ideals of brotherhood and of mercy unheard since the de- 
cay of the ancient world. Two reasons explain this par- 
adox. The power of the centralized state supplied it 
with instruments of force on a scale previously unknown, 
and like to-day the capacity for good and evil became 
enormously increased. The evil came from the practical 
enforcement of policy methodically organized and re- 
lentlessly carried out. The good emanated from the ap- 
peal of an ancient civilization at last understood. 

For the first time human conscience allowed instincts 
of compassion to mature. However rudimentary the ex- 
pression of European public opinion may seem, however 
slight was its real power, the fact that it existed in a 
modern sense and was not merely the dead voice of medi- 
eval scholasticism possesses enormous importance. Eight- 
eenth Century ideas of human perfectibihty and brother- 
hood date from the Renaissance. 

Because a noble hope is confined to a minority unable 
to apply it practically, does not mean that it is negligible. 
The action of a majority is not, necessarily, a safer test 
of permanent value. Historians have so generally confined 
their study to the governing class, that they tend to 
disregard other expressions whose influence cannot be 
'brushed aside because of cherishing ideals out of relation 
with the necessities of the time. 

The ideal of peace was not born in the Renaissance. 
Medieval political philosophy with its conception of the 
Christian republic and its universal dream of the Empire 
had often expressed it. A poet like Gower inveighs against 
the horror of war.^ Sir David Lyndsay calls shame on 
those who take the name of Christians to make war.^ 

230 



PACIFISM AND WAR 231 

The pacifism of the Sixteenth Century for the first time 
saw things in a more modern Hght. Erasmus raised his 
voice against war, even with the Turks, on the ground of 
their being men for whose salvation Christ had suflFered. 
No recent argument against war can be stronger than 
some of the Sixteenth Century writings on the subject,^ 
or Breughel's paintings of its horrors. 

More's traveller returning from Utopia contrasts the 
warlike pleasures of princes in Europe with the peace- 
fulness of Utopians. They are averse to alliances because 
these tend to make people believe that without them na- 
tions are enemies. The fellowship of nature is strong and 
men are more surely knit together by love than by cov- 
enant. Utopians waged war solely in defence of their own 
country or "to deliver from the yoke and bondage of 
tyranny some people that be therewith oppressed."* 
They saved their enemies' land as much as possible, and 
obliged them only to pay as indemnity the cost of the war. 
Compassion for their foes is not the least modern of the 
Utopian traits. "They do no less pity the base and com- 
mon sort of their enemies' people than they do their own; 
knowing that they be driven and enforced to war against 
their wills by the furious madness of their princes and 
heads. "5 

A few men cherished a noble ideal in the seclusion of 
their studies. But how different was reality. The chap- 
ter of cruelty did not vary much from the history of war 
before or since. Amid much indifference to suffering, 
there are occasional examples of kindness shown to the 
enemy, perhaps, on grounds of policy. How far were 
instincts of compassion aroused, how far were these merely 
dictated by the wish to appear conciliatory.? After Sol- 
way Moss the Scottish prisoners were most hospitably 
entertained in London. 

The treatment of captives is among the tests of human- 
ity. It was a grievance of the French that their prisoners 
in England were badly used,^ in contrast with the Duke of 



232 TUDOR IDEALS 

Guise who found himself warmly praised for the courtesy 
he displayed to the English captured at Guisnes/ 

Cruelty was oftener the rule. Somerset whose domes- 
tic government was humane carried out his expedition 
against Scotland with a ruthlessness which shocked even 
Englishmen. De Selve, the French Ambassador, remon- 
strated with the Protector because of the inhuman treat- 
ment shown French prisoners captured in the Scottish 
wars and protested against the execution of the Spaniards 
taken at the siege of Yester. Somerset explained the first 
on the ground of reprisals for the alleged bad treatment of 
the English on the French galleys, but the second, more 
difficult, was put down to the fact that these had not been 
promised their lives. ^ 

Instincts of compassion were commended, but ruth- 
lessness excited no indignation. In Lord Hertford's ex- 
pedition against Scotland in 1544, it seemed natural that 
Edinburgh should be burned to the ground and the con- 
temporary chronicle relates that the English light horse- 
men left neither village nor house nor stack of corn 
unburnt within seven miles of the capital. There is less 
cause for surprise at such acts than at the indifference with 
which they were told. At Dunbar, the citizens believed 
themselves safe from the English who refrained from vi- 
olence until the moment of their departure, when the in- 
habitants being in bed they set fire to the town "and in 
their first sleep closed in with fire the men, women, and 
children were suffocated and burnt. " ^ 

The horrors of warfare in a ravaged country excited the 
compassion of an old soldier like La Noue who tried 
thereby to impress its evils. Languet wrote Sidney of 
the madness of those who longed for a reputation 
founded on bloodshed and believed there was no glory 
save that connected with the destruction of mankind. 
He entreated Sidney to employ his own particle of 
divinity "for the preservation and not the destruction 
of man." ^^ Languet indignant at the butchery going 



PACIFISM AND WAR 233 

on in the Low Countries could write of Alva that nothing 
vexed him more than having left survivors of his cruelty. 
The Spanish atrocities shocked those who like Gascoigne 
admired their courage and warlike skill. His account of 
the Sack of Antwerp in 1576 helped to arouse the violent 
hatred against them. Their cruelty in the colonies also 
revolted the English. Las Casas had censured his own 
countrymen for their savagery, and his English translator 
remarked that posterity would doubt "that ever so 
barbarous or cruel a nation hath been in the world." ^^ 

In England, the feeling of humanity was applauded as a 
national virtue. The virtues of the English were brought 
into relief and writers refused to admit that they had ever 
been guilty of acts of cruelty in war.^^ Cruelty when 
committed was less a principle than a policy which came 
easily to the rougher nature of the age, and was often tried 
alternately with more humane practice. Philip II having 
failed with Alva tried conciliation with Parma. Henry 
VIII cruel by nature used a conciliatory policy in Ireland, 
while the reverse was true of Elizabeth. To those ac- 
quainted with local conditions then as now, mildness 
seemed an error and only the strong hand impressed. ^^ 

The charge of wanton savagery cannot be laid at the 
door of England in comparison with Spain, but there were 
occasions when English ferocity could not easily have been 
surpassed. The resistance of the Irish stirred their worst 
passions, and cold-blooded massacres more than once 
disgraced British arms. Such wholesale butchery as the 
murder of the Spanish and Italian expedition to Ireland 
after its surrender shocked even contemporary opinion, 
and was only explained on the ground that the English 
lacked food wherewith to feed the prisoners. There 
were some Englishmen like Sir William Herbert who felt 
ashamed that instead of justice and civilization for the 
poor inhabitants, the occupation should have led to such 
disgraceful excesses. 



IX. THE FEELING OF COMPASSION 

Not the absence of cruelty but the fact that for the first 
time it stirred men to indignation, made the Sixteenth 
Century remarkable. Practice and some theory sustained 
ruthless enforcement of policy and law, but there were 
glimmerings of humanity and the birth of an opinion 
which was gradually to exercise a civilizing influence. 
Thomas More wrote that the death penalty was too great 
a punishment for theft and by surpassing the needs of 
justice proved injurious to the Commonwealth. All the 
goods in the world could not make up for human life.^ 
No jurist ever made a clearer distinction between the 
taking of life and the taking of property. 

Later in the century, the Catholic controversialist 
Starkey wrote that it was a disgrace for England "to be 
governed by the laws given to us of such a barbarous 
nation as the Normans" and that hanging men for petty 
theft was both against nature and humanity.^ The 
Frenchman Perhn who visited England in the middle of 
the century, had been shocked by the cruelty of its justice 
which he contrasted unfavourably with the French where 
punishment was proportioned to the crime. ^ Spenser 
condemned the application of English law to Ireland. 
Laws, he thought, ought not to be imposed on men but 
fashioned in accordance with the manners and conditions 
of the people for whom they are intended. "No laws of 
man are just but as in regard of the evils which they 
prevent and the safety of the Commonwealth which they 
provide for." ^ 

Although prisons were not reformed until a compar- 
atively recent date their abuses were even then deplored 
by some. Brynklow inveighed against the cruelty shown 
to offenders in prison whose lodging was " too bad for hogs 

234 



THE FEELING OF COMPASSION 235 

and as for their meat it is evil enough for dogs."^ In 
Stubbes' opinion death was preferable to imprisonment in 
subterranean dungeons.^ Some efforts were made to 
bring relief to these unfortunates. Latimer relates that 
Master Bilney used to spend his time in visiting prisoners 
and sick.^ Toward the end of the century imprisonment 
for debt was regarded with disapproval.^ 

The practice of torture currently used to elicit informa- 
tion and, occasionally in punishment, was revolting. In 
158 1 when Alexander Brian suffered martyrdom with 
Fathers Campion and Sherwin, pins were thrust under his 
nails and water was denied him till he was driven to lick 
the moisture of the wall.^ Executions with all their 
horrible details were too frequent to affect the popular 
imagination. Glancing at the pages of any contemporary 
diary one notices how perfunctorily they are related. ^° 
Camden briefly narrating the horrible details of Babing- 
ton's execution remarks that it was done "not without 
some note of cruelty." ^^ 

A tradition of benevolence had been handed down in 
England from time immemorial. The earliest hospitals 
probably owed their origin to similar institutions in Italy. 
St. Bartholomew's was founded by a pilgrim on his return 
from Rome and several benevolent foundations in London 
trace a medieval origin. Peele relates how Edward I 
returning from the Crusade established an institution for 
his disabled men.^^ 

Legacies to hospitals and for the poor were frequent. ^^ 
Henry VII who built the Savoy hospital for one hundred 
poor persons also intended to erect a large hospital at 
Bath on the model of one in Paris. The deficiencies of 
organized charity were to a great extent made up by the 
broad hospitality everywhere displayed. It was a recog- 
nized duty of the almoner of a castle to dole to the poor the 
viands left over.^* Stow relates how Edward, Earl of 
Derby, fed regularly sixty aged poor and on certain occa- 
sions gave drink and money to thousands. The Lady 



236 TUDOR IDEALS 

Margaret of Richmond maintained twelve poor people in 
her house and attended them herself when they fell ill.^^ 
Bishop Fisher's doors were always open to the needy, and 
Wolsey even in disgrace kept open house to all comers rich 
and poor.^^ Such examples could be multiplied. Thomas 
Cromwell, little of a humanitarian, daily fed 200 people, 
observing that "ancient and charitable custom as all 
prelates, noblemen or men of honour and worship his 
predecessors had done before him." ^^ Nor was it only 
among great officials that this practice was observed. The 
Ballad, on the death of Lord Huntington, says in his 
praise 

" His gates were still open the strangers to feed 
and comfort the succourless always in need." ^^ 

Latimer wrote of his father that though a poor yeoman he 
gave hospitality to his poorer neighbours. ^^ The practice 
of benevolence was traditional, butinadequate to grappling 
with the larger problems of poverty and unemployment 
which the economic changes of the century brought 
about. Latimer referred to the then owner of his father's 
farm who was no longer able "to give a cup of drink to the 
poor," and how conditions had changed from former days, 
when everyone left money for the relief of those in want 
and to help needy students at the University.^" 

The increase in poverty was attributed to the suppres- 
sion of the monasteries, which had before done much for 
relief but whose inmates, now cast on the highroad, added 
to the vagrancy. Rabid reformers like Brynklow and 
Simon Fish ended by regretting the passing of the monks 
who had never raised rents and always succoured the 
needy.^^ Misery excited compassion, and a conscious 
feeling of pity stirred men. The inner history of the 
age still remains obscure, but it is probable that if the 
economic change had been less brutally effected, the 
numerous risings in the name of religion might not have 
found supporters among the discontented. 



THE FEELING OF COMPASSION 237 

An active feeling of duty to the poor became notice- 
able. Its expressions range from the sympathy of men 
in high position like More, Elyot,^^ and even Wolsey, 
who made lawyers plead gratis for all poor suitors ^^ till it 
reached popular preachers like Lever and Fish who pro- 
claimed relief to the needy as a duty.^'* 

Practical reformers like Crowley and Brynklow urged 
the appointment of medical practitioners in every town to 
look after the poor without pay ^^ and proposed that a 
certain number of children in each city should be brought 
up at the expense of the community.^® 

The plans of social reformers were rarely constructive. 
Attacking abuses they had less in mind a feasible plan for 
reform than a return to the medieval structure of a society 
where the relations from peasant to king were established 
beforehand. Although revolted by the effects of the great 
upheaval which had transformed every class, and been 
the apparent cause for so much misery, they had no real 
plan to suggest. The poor were under the special protec- 
tion of the king and to take this away was against the 
royal honour. ^^ 

Edward VI was greatly interested in the condition of 
the needy. Hospitals which depended on monastic 
foundations had suffered confiscation under his father's 
reign and in spite of the petitions by the city of London 
had not been restored. With the new king such founda- 
tions for the sick and for poor children were once more 
established^^ and he himself gave up the palace of Bride- 
well as a workhouse for the destitute. 

After a sermon by Bishop Ridley exhorting the rich to 
relieve the afflicted of their distress, the king was so much 
moved that he wrote to the mayor and a committee was 
appointed to consider the question. It resulted in perhaps 
the first large attempt made in England to deal with the 
problem of poverty. The poor were divided into three 
main classes, those by impotency, by casualty, and the 
thriftless, and each of these in turn was subdivided into 



238 TUDOR IDEALS 

three sub-classes. The first by impotency included (i) 
orphans and paupers' children, (2) the aged blind, and 
lame, (3) the permanently diseased, like lepers. The poor 
by casualty, comprised (4) the wounded soldiers, (5) the 
decayed householders, (6) the sufferers from serious illness. 
Lastly the thriftless poor included (7) the rioters and 
wasters, (8) vagabonds and vagrants, (9) prostitutes.^^ 
Houses were established to provide for the different kinds 
of poor. Vagabonds and idle strumpets were to be chas- 
tised and compelled to labour at Bridewell. The decayed 
householder could be looked after in his own home, but 
lepers were to be segregated outside the city. Edward VI 
contributed liberally to the annual support of these new 
institutions. 

With private benevolence on the wane, a new desire 
for organization and state direction of charity had been 
introduced. Like so many other measures of the time it 
was rudimentary, spasmodic, and incomplete. The poor 
laws passed during the Sixteenth Century shock us by 
their harshness which in certain cases condemned vaga- 
bonds to slavery. But they evince a desire to grapple 
with the problem of relief, nationally instead of locally. 
The spirit of altruism which had before been the province of 
castle and monastery now passed to the state although the 
state was unprepared to assume its new duty. The transi- 
tion which took place was a necessary link in the chain, 
before real progress could be accomplished. 

Provision was made for the aged and the impotent poor 
at the charge of the parish, and the curate was ordered 
to remind his congregation of their charitable duty to 
these. Laws were passed from time to time fixing local 
responsibility as a general principle. Holinshed comments 
at length on the poor laws and the weekly collections 
taken in every parish of the realm. ^^ Many gave and left 
their money freely for charity, while benevolent societies 
like that of "The Chest" at Chatham in which Haw- 
kins and Drake found interest, were also established. 



THE FEELING OF COMPASSION 239 

The feeling of compassion was growing. Men began to 
feel more strongly the need of helping their fellow crea- 
tures.^^ Rosalind bids Brion spend a year tending the 
afflicted in hospitals. The extremes of poverty existed 
and the Sixteenth Century mind was unable to grap- 
ple successfully with the vast problem. Stubbes could 
write feelingly about the miserable condition of the poor 
who lay starving in the streets of London, while people 
spent fortunes on dress. ^^ Such misery was all the more 
impressive because a new chord of humanity had been 
awakened in England. Benevolence was no longer the 
care of monk and knight or even of rich city merchants, 
but of the entire population. 



X. MORALITY 

It is fortunately impossible to cast a nation's morals into 
statistical form, but a subject which touches so inti- 
mately the soul of the people cannot be dismissed because 
of its evasive nature, nor confined solely within the wall 
of sex. 

The early moral evolution of Tudor England is difficult 
to discuss as soon as one leaves the common groundwork 
of all ages. The time was still dumb and inarticulate. 
The human outlook in England at the end of the Middle 
Ages was peculiarly sombre, with little to elevate, to at- 
tract or to redeem. 

The tendency of medieval life had been to make rigid 
the framework of society. Under such conditions the 
value of personality was depressed and man became largely 
absorbed by caste. Even morality yielded to the oppres- 
sion of such ideas, and human beings became the chattels 
of a system which they had helped to form. Freedom 
from such tyranny came only gradually through the 
crumbling of a structure which had lost its vitality. 

When the discipline of an order is relaxed, its constituent 
parts become free to assert themselves. The weakness of 
the feudal system grew apparent by the lawlessness which 
set in as soon as its balance was upset. Anarchy is the un- 
licensed form of individualism. But political changes were 
only the outward expression for moral ones. During those 
intermediate stages between periods of great change, ideas 
turn fluid. When they harden, again something has 
altered although the consciousness of what this is, may 
not at once become apparent. 

When Englishmen began to feel their awakening, the 
moral individualism which made men think and judge, 

240 



MORALITY 241 

was almost a novel sensation. It had not been unknown 
during the Middle Ages but it could never then take deep 
root because the means of rapid diffusion and organization 
against established institutions were still lacking. In the 
early Sixteenth Century, the crown was pleased to find a 
new born public opinion directed on moral grounds against 
the monasteries in whose destruction it hoped to find profit. 
Monastic abuses seemed unpardonable to the early Six- 
teenth Century because they were the abuses of another 
age while evils incident to their suppression were those of 
the time and therefore appeared less offensive to con- 
temporaries. 

How far such abuses were justified is hardly the ques- 
tion. Catholic historians have proved that the monas- 
teries were far from being such sinks of iniquity as con- 
temporary opinion represented them. Their real sin lay 
in having ceased to be in vital relation with the needs 
of the people. The growing popular consciousness turned 
with sound instinct but false reason against institutions 
which no longer justified their existence. Skelton who is 
as bad a poet as he is an interesting critic of the age, ex- 
pressed the feeling of resentment against the comfortable 
wealth of the monasteries and the neglect of bishops who 
had become heedless of their flocks' welfare. 

In England and Scotland the friars were the butt for 
the moral censure of the time, A new public opinion 
formed by different currents felt its strength by uniting 
against an unpopular and rich institution of foreign origin 
and partially under foreign control. Yet there is little to 
prove that the evils pointed out were more the rule than 
the exception. Undoubtedly any iron law applied to hu- 
man beings often in the most inhuman manner, is certain 
to provoke a revolt hidden or open on the part of natures 
who find themselves enmeshed in a web where they can- 
not rest but from which they are unable to escape. 
Herein, must be found the defence for many of the lapses 
from conventional standards which were eagerly seized 



242 TUDOR IDEALS 

upon by enemies of the system. Where monasticism 
failed to impose its discipline it provoked an apparent 
immorality which was in no way characteristic, but more 
often a reaction from a system too far removed from life. 
To judge such exceptions as representative of the whole 
or as injurious to the population, is to distort the facts. 
Although morality provided the excuse which could unite 
fanatical reformers eager to sweep away the past, and 
rapacious courtiers eager to divide the spoils, it was not 
the real reason which made desirable the suppression of 
the monasteries. Morals were no better and in many 
respects worse after this had been accomplished. 

The immorality of earlier times had been largely caused 
by the existence of definite unnatural circumstances. 
The new immorality was one of individual license and 
greed caused by the sudden removal of former conditions 
and untempered by the restraints of anything more than 
a spasmodic public opinion. 

The evils attached to institutions change shape after 
decay. Morals ceased to form part of a rigid system but 
were increasingly attached to the individual whose actions, 
for better or for worse, became freer. Human beings 
were no longer left under a fixed discipline. A new con- 
science and new appetites were awakened. The moral 
nature of man became immensely extended. The old 
sanctions had largely disappeared or been transformed 
and another order had not yet arisen. The extension of 
fresh interests, the acquisition of wealth, the introduc- 
tion of new fashions, the opening of other perspectives 
were as many avenues which called into play instincts 
moral and immoral. We are too prone to confine the 
latter to questions of sex, whereas they affect the entire 
nature of man. And human nature always reacts to the 
the spur of fresh opportunity. 

For the vast majority who did not fall to depths of sin 
or rise to heights of saintliness, the rule of conduct came 
rather from a mingled sense of honour, patriotism and in- 



MORALITY 243 

terest. Among the upper classes the conduct of life was no 
longer shaped by rigid rule, but by a variety of circum- 
stances still undefined or largely unwritten, but which had 
little to do with religion sanctions. The charges of atheism 
levelled against Thomas Cromwell or Queen Elizabeth 
arose from the perception of their individualism. The 
Renaissance did not willingly betray its own secrets, and 
the defence for the conduct of individuals found no 
written apology. 

The age was marked by parallel movements which as- 
sumed contradictory forms. The growth of luxury and 
the introduction of foreign refinements aided the pursuit 
of pleasure as circumstances, which if they did not directly 
make for immorality were yet associated therewith. 
Individualism ran riot on both sides and the abuse of 
moralists proved more violent than the misdeeds attacked. 
In satire, sermon, tract, and pamphlet, the outburst ten- 
ded to mould a new public opinion. Moral pleas will al- 
ways unite the mass against alleged vices which remain 
dumb. Those who dislike the foreign origin of luxury 
with its supposedly pernicious Influence on morals vented 
their instinctive preferences by roundly abusing whatever 
came from abroad.^ 

In every age or land it is easy to draw up a calendar of 
vice and call it typical. A certain residue of evil will al- 
ways exist without enduring harm, but nothing is more 
misleading than to overemphasize this. Vice and virtue 
are floating instincts whose expression and volume vary 
with circumstance whenever conditions put new dress 
on old sins. In an age like the Sixteenth Century, high 
virtue was often accompanied by vice. 

In matters of sex, such knowledge as we possess of its 
worthies' intimate life, suggest neither severe standards 
nor unusual laxity. In England the world of courtesans 
never assumed the importance it did in Italy. No Ver- 
onica Franco graces the annals of its cultivation, and it 
always remained degraded and hidden from view, with- 



244 TUDOR IDEALS 

out the brilliancy or ostentation it tended to assume in 
Latin countries. 

To suggest that the libertinage of the court was not 
representative of England is to utter the commonest of 
platitudes, but if one appropriates its virtues it is unfair 
to reject the remainder. Certainly the individual who, 
in circles of the court, willingly conformed himself to 
the discipline of courage and when necessary of sacrifice, 
could in other respects be allowed wide latitude without 
the nation being the worse for it. That vice may have 
grown during England's heroic age is not unlikely for 
it is usually associated with wealth and leisure. Less ap- 
parent to contemporary observers was the fact of its 
accompaniment by new virtues. Vice by itself has never 
ruined a nation except when unrelieved by qualities. 
Rome in the Augustan age was, probably, far more im- 
moral than four centuries later. 

Englishmen in the Sixteenth Century were little better 
or worse than at other times. The violent outbursts of 
Puritans were largely partisan and John Knox' private 
life proves that even in his circle men were susceptible to 
feminine charm. 



XL THE FAMILY 

The Sixteenth Century man who asserted himself success- 
fully in new fields, discovered greater difficulty as soon as 
he clashed against an accepted institution. Individual 
freedom is difficult to attain when domestic relations are 
imposed by a rigorous law. The family at such times 
exercises a pressure which makes for restricting personal 
liberty. It tends to create a mechanical conception of 
human intercourse, depresses the value of personality, and 
sanctions an exaggerated development of conventions 
which have arisen out of natural human relations. The 
spirit of Tudor England, in many respects conducive to 
freedom, and in some even to license, remained in others 
enough under the influence of a medieval past to accept 
conventional family relationships based on material 
advantage regardless of preference or of personal happi- 
ness. 

Long recognized institutions developed this feeling and 
contributed to reactions of laxity in other respects. In the 
"Paston Letters" one reads that Stephen Scrope was sold 
by his stepfather Sir John Fastolf to the Chief Justice of 
England, Sir William Gascoigne, for 500 marks, and later, 
when he had been disfigured for life, bought back again. 
"He bought me and sold me as a beast." ^ Foreigners were 
impressed by the lack of family affection in England. A 
mother remarks casually of her daughter being beaten 
"twice in one day and her head broken in two or three 
places." ^ Children were sent to be brought up in the 
houses of strangers. Thomas More, after he had finished 
his first Latin studies was placed by his father in Cardinal 
Morton's household where he served at table. ^ Boys 
were thought to learn better manners in strangers' houses, 

24s 



246 TUDOR IDEALS 

but the Italian traveller set down the reason to lack of 
family afiFection, although More's own household later 
offered a conspicuous exception. 

The system of wards in chancery for whom marriages 
were regularly arranged, arose from the slight value 
attached to human personality. The brother of the Duke 
of Suffolk, a lad of eighteen, was boarded out to a widow of 
fifty, whom he married.^ Contemporaries condemned the 
practice of wards as leading to adultery and divorce.^ 
It shocked the better minds of the age. "Our old barbar- 
ous custom of wards must be abrogated," says Cardinal 
Pole, "as it destroys true love in matrimony." ^ 

But marriage was hardly ever regarded as a matter of 
affection. The mechanical conception of human relations 
prevailed which caused family ties to seem a question of 
barter and convenience. Royal marriages, to-day, are 
often regarded in this light. Yet even these no longer go 
so far as Henry the Seventh, who after the death of his 
wife, thought of marrying his widowed daughter-in-law, 
Katherine of Aragon, and when this fell through, was not 
averse to marriage with her sister the Mad Juana in spite 
of her insanity. That the most cautious of men and most 
exemplary of husbands could entertain such ideas, shows 
that he did not anticipate that they would meet with any 
serious criticism. 

The free play of human inclination was rarely able to 
assert its rights in the face of rigid ideas of obligation 
surrounding marriage. Thomas More had been desirous 
to wed Colet's second daughter but on reflecting that the 
first would feel slighted at seeing the younger preferred to 
herself in marriage, he changed his affections for her elder 
sister.'^ Child marriages provided another cause for 
frequent unhappiness.^ Lord Mountjoy, when he re- 
turned to England with Erasmus, had been married for 
more than two years, while his child wife remained under 
her father's roof. Surrey is said to have been married at 
sixteen, Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger at fifteen. 



THE FAMILY 247 

A moralist like Latimer deplored the evil of marriages 
which took place only because they joined "land to land 
and possession to possessions." ^ 

Where such slight respect was entertained for human 
happiness, Henry VIII 's personal immorality was not 
without its good effects. The mechanical conception of 
the family which had strongly marked all social life, was 
in his case at least replaced by ideas depending on more 
human inclinations. His whims it is true, were pushed to 
an outrageous exaggeration and darkened by cruelty and 
crime. Yet paradoxical as it may seem, the glaring 
immorality attending the royal uxoriousness, was in cer- 
tain respects more conducive to moral betterment than 
the pure family life of Henry VII. Where the father 
built his domestic relations solely on a foundation of 
interest, the son by giving rein to his basest instincts freed 
the individual from the oppression of the sole wish for 
material advantage. In spite of a personal immorality he 
helped to introduce healthier ideas of free selection. 

His influence went further than is suspected. The 
King's marriage to Anne Boleyn has been narrated from 
every point of view save that in following the inclination 
of his heart, he was unconsciously expressing the modern 
idea of individual choice. Cutting loose from the earlier 
immorality of sordidness, the king's example, bad as it 
was, aided to restore the free volition of man in the great 
relations of life. To his credit, he accepted the same ideas 
in others of his family and to the surprise of many ac- 
quiesced in his sister the widowed Queen of France marry- 
ing a lately ennobled commoner whom he made his bosom 
friend. The royal example was typical of the Renaissance 
by its assertion of human rights and its substitution of the 
individual for the collective interest. Katherine Parr, 
herself, the chastest of ladies, after burying three husbands 
married a fourth only four months after the death of 
Henry VIII. 

In domestic relations people felt increasingly that they 



248 TUDOR IDEALS 

were human beings and not pieces who fitted into a caste. 
The Duchess of Suffolk after the misadventures of her 
family from Lady Jane Grey to Lady Mary who had 
married Keys the groom porter at the Court, "herself 
forgetting the nobility of her lineage had married Adrian 
Stokes a mean gentleman to her dishonour but for her 
security." ^^ A modern mind like Sir Henry Wotton's 
contrasted the freer English practice with the German 
who sought in matrimony to equal his title and regarded 
marriage with a commoner's daughter as a blot on the 
family. "England is more lighthearted in these cases and 
even the greatest women have the destiny to match with 
their own servants." 

Henry VIII influenced his subjects' ideas in contra- 
dictory ways. The effect of the royal divorce upon the 
English people is not unnaturally regarded as one of the 
touchstones of its morals. It was so interwoven with 
political and religious threads, that it cannot be judged 
solely in this light. Undoubtedly the king setting Kather- 
ine aside on a flimsy pretext, disturbed many subjects who 
felt human pity for an innocence which had done no wrong. 
If his action had been more rapid and less concerned with 
seeking papal sanction for his conduct, the awe then 
inspired by the prince was so great that censure would 
have held its wings. The long dragged out divorce pro- 
ceedings caused an awakened moral feeling which sim- 
mered through his reign, till the habit of judging royalty 
became familiar to the ideas of the age. 

How far the royal example reacted on the nation is not 
easy to establish. By itself it was a sensational develop- 
ment of the new spirit freeing human volition. Henry 
VIII, by temperament the most despotic of men, would 
doubtless have been the last to recognize that he was 
preparing the ground for the liberty of others, with whom 
his own immoral license might become a moral order. 
Often the most commonplace occurrences in an age are the 
most difficult to discern. Forming part of the unwritten 



THE FAMILY 249 

code of life the memory disappears as soon as the tradition 
alters. 

During the Sixteenth Century, although relics of the past 
like the ward system survived in family life, its abuses were 
no longer so flagrant. As is often the case in a long drawn 
silent contest affecting not dift'erent classes but the same 
class at different ages, a kind of compromise was reached 
which must have satisfied the needs of the majority. 
There are indications that others beside the king wanted 
their freedom of choice. Changes which seemed so repre- 
hensible to old-fashioned moralists were a sign of progress. 

Roger Ascham could write "Our time is so far from that 
old discipline and obedience as now, not only young 
gentlemen but even very girls dare without all fear though 
not without open shame, where they list and how they 
list marry themselves in spite of father, mother, God, good 
order and all." ^^ In Scotland, Lyndsay at heart a mediev- 
alist in spite of his reforming propensities, was scandalized 
at the "bastard bairns of state spiritual" marrying those 
of noble blood, and would have each order marry only 
among themselves with the penalty for nobles of degra- 
dation from their rank.^^ The condemnation of such 
marriages is proof of what was then taking place. 

Ancient ideas which find support in self-interest are 
tardy in their decay. But new thoughts of human freedom 
and dignity were in the air. Amid disappearing traditions 
human personality shapes its own path. Canon law which 
survived the discarded authority of Rome acted as a brake, 
and was used as a discipline even by reformers to bring sta- 
bility to the domestic relations of life. Others than the \ 
king, however, found means of twisting the law to their 
desire. When the Marquis of Northampton put aside his 
first wife to marry Elizabeth Cobham and had been sum- 
moned in consequence before Somerset's Council, he ob- 
tained the support of Hooper who advocated equal liberty 
of divorce in case of adultery. This was contrary to the 
same Canon law which had at one time been ready to toler- 



250 TUDOR IDEALS 

ate two wives for Henry VIII but refused to recognize di- 
vorce. After Somerset's fall, Northampton found means 
to legalize his second marriage by act of Parliament. 

In an age of transition, where the individual is powerful 
enough, he is able to do as he likes. Not so when a con- 
servative reaction has again created conditions of stability. 
Lord Mountjoy, the greatest soldier of Elizabeth's reign, 
could live in open sin with Lady Rich — the Penelope of 
Sidney's love. A special precedence could be created for 
her at Court where such intimacy was accepted. But their 
marriage after divorce scandalized a society accustomed 
to accept whatever was beneath the surface, but unwilling 
to see the Canon law openly violated. 

Married life, as in our day, allowed for all extremes. 
Florizel falls in love with Perdita. Lord Rich gives his 
wife every license, so long as her brother Essex is power- 
ful, but divorces her after his execution. More and Bacon 
uphold high standards of fidelity. The question of love 
in and out of wedlock carries one into a realm where ex- 
perience is doubtful. Courtly life centred around gallan- 
try. Love was the goal of earthly attainment; deeds of 
valour were mainly to win such love and the lover had 
to consecrate his life to his lady. The medieval ideal sur- 
vived long after a different spirit had penetrated, for 
it is difficult to conceive of a court where such ideas were 
of less practical importance. The hardheadedness of the 
Tudors found relaxation in playing with fancies whose 
worth they would have been the last to exaggerate. 

It is unnecessary to wait for the Restoration to dis- 
cover modern ideas of the sex no longer raised to the pin- 
nacle imposed by earlier convention. Lyly expressed the 
prevalent court feeling. His goal is not one of passion but 
of money and position, the desire for which is unabashed. 
The conventions of chivalry are frankly abandoned for 
a pleasant banter, and a learned preciosity, fitting in with 
fashionable cultivated tendencies. 

At the court of Elizabeth, morals were neither so good 



THE FAMILY 251 

nor so bad as at times represented. Lord Southampton 
might pursue an intrigue with Miss Vernon, but so soon 
as her condition rendered it necessary, he married her in 
spite of the risk. A Manningham might comment on the 
Earl of Sussex keeping his mistress openly as "a practise 
to bring the nobility into contempt and beggary." So- 
cial conditions were then approximating a more mod- 
ern phase. 

Below the court circle it is difficult to generalize. In 
spite of Puritan attacks there was great improvement in 
the personal conduct of the clergy, although an arch- 
bishop paid blackmail on one famous occasion. ^^ Puri- 
tanism was already asserting its cleansing force. 



PART IV 
THE ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 



I. THE MODERN SPIRIT 

With the Renaissance, man appears as a self-conscious 
being, open to impression, less hardened by convention, 
more concerned with this life and less by the next than 
during the Middle Ages. A new intellectual curiosity left 
him no longer afraid of ideas. 

Modern man was born in England in the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury. In Scotland where many still lived a medieval life, 
James Buchanan, the humanist, could write self-con- 
sciously that he was born "neither in a climate, country 
nor age that was learned." In England, however, medieval 
and modern types of men intermingled and blended with 
the modern in increasing frequency. Yet how hard it is to 
lay down any real cleavage of type between the two, can be 
judged from Thomas More's example. He was modern 
in the best sense, by his respect for human life, his im- 
mense sympathy for the oppressed, and his small rever- 
ence for the mighty. Classical secular morality made 
him accept suicide for those afflicted by incurable disease.^ 
But More wore the hair shirt next to his skin, and ruth- 
lessly persecuted heresy. The contradiction of the age 
offers no more striking example. 

Self-consciousness is the mental watershed which sepa- 
rates the Renaissance from the Middle Ages. As soon as 
men reasoned about their age and contrasted it with me- 
dieval rudeness they had reached the threshold of modern 
times. A new introspection had been learned. Sidney 
writes to Languet: "In your letters I fancy I see a picture 
of the age in which we live; an age that resembles a bow 
too long bent, it must be unstrung or it will break. "^ 
Languet who had taught Sidney his humanity was modern, 
when he wrote an apology for Pibrac who, in order to 

255 



2s6 TUDOR IDEALS 

save his life, had been forced to publish a defence of the 
Massacre of St. Bartholomew which he detested. 

"I am accustomed to judge of men otherwise than most 
persons do; unless they are utterly depraved, I cull out 
their good qualities if they have any; and if through error 
or weakness they fail in any point, I put it out of sight as 
far as I can."^ 

The gigantic transformations of the Sixteenth Century, 
the clash between opposing forces, and the confusion be- 
tween spiritual and political interests presented a specta- 
cle of chaos to those to who tried to reason. Even to-day, 
with the perspective of centuries behind us and the com- 
parative indifference caused by our remoteness, we can 
hardly explain the age, save in the light of our sympathies 
or prejudices. How much more difficult was the task of 
whoever breathed its air or felt stirred by its living 
emotions. 

Men realized that the epoch was quite unlike any other. 
Geoffrey Fenton alludes to his time as "seasons so perilous 
and conspiring," ^ and Pietro Ubaldini, dedicating his "Il- 
lustrious Women" to Queen Elizabeth, calls the age "this 
our unhappy century. " Yet a contemporary of Shakes- 
peare and Spenser could write — "We have fallen into the 
barren age of the world . . . there is general sterility. " ^ 

The tendency of thinkers in any period of sudden change 
is to express regret for a real or mythical past. Only after 
another generation is born, do men begin to preach the 
merits of the new. Gabriel Harvey who has passed most 
unjustly into history as a pedant, takes up the defence of 
his time in a letter to Spenser: 

"You suppose the first age was the Golden Age. It is 
nothing so. Bodin defendeth the gold age to flourish now 
and our first great-grandfathers to have rubbed through 
in the iron and brazen age at the beginning, when all 
things were rude and imperfect in comparison of the ex- 
quisite finesse and delicacy that we are grown into at 
these days. " ^ 



THE MODERN SPIRIT 257 

Harvey saw a new spirit sweeping over the land. 
"England never had more honourable minds, more ad- 
venturous hearts, more valorous heads or more excellent 
wits than of late." Let men read of Humphrey Gil- 
bert and Drake, of Frobisher and Raleigh, to feel pride 
in their countrymen's achievements in action and letters.^ 
Samuel Daniel also condemned the "idle affectation of 
antiquity" and disparaged the achievements of the hu- 
manists, declaring himself "jealous of our fame and repu- 
tation." Like any modern evolutionist, he wrote "This 
is but a character of that perpetual revolution which we 
see to be in all things that never remain the same and we 
must herein be content to submit ourselves to the law of 
time which in few years will make all that for which we 
now contend nothing."^ 

Bacon, most modern of all, without prejudice or sym- 
pathy weighed the current of every force, condemning 
alike the undue reverence for antiquity and the undue de- 
sire for novelty. He found the appropriate motto of the 
age in Charles the Fifth's device of Plus Ultra, " there is 
more beyond." 

Sensitiveness to impression, daring thought which led 
to action and action which led to thought, were the 
signs of the new spirit. The pleasures of cultivated in- 
tercourse were being discovered. Literature as the mark 
of human consciousness was expressing thoughts hitherto 
unknown. 

A new consciousness, in part popular, was arising out 
of letters; a Scottish courtier like David Lyndsay declared 
that he wrote in the vulgar tongue as his rhymes were in- 
tended for "colliers, carters, and cooks." ^ Gawain Doug- 
las translated Virgil in order that it might be read by the 
masses. A novel literary pride was spreading fostered by 
consciousness of achievement. Puttenham went about 
searching for the pure wells of English and discovering 
them in the shires far from scholars' affectations of the 
Universities, or the ports where strangers haunt. ^° Wil- 



258 TUDOR IDEALS 

liam Webbe after praising Chaucer remarked, in 1586, 
that until twenty years before, no work of importance had 
been written in the English tongue." Spenser told his 
countrymen that no nation in the world exceeded them in 
knowledge and humanity. 

Intellectual curiosity spread from the ancient world's 
revelation to search into every aspect of life. The de- 
scriptive narratives which had satisfied medieval interest 
were succeeded by histories written in a critical spirit. 

The spirit of the Renaissance meant the awakening 
self-consciousness in man. The senses of distance and of 
difference, applied to the criticism of life, were henceforth 
to become intellectual processes instead of rough general- 
ities as had been true during the Middle Ages. The feel- 
ing of the age came from realizing the distance traversed 
by man and measuring the methods by which this had 
been effected. Petrarch's "opening the libraries which till 
then were shut up, and beating away the dust and filth 
from the good books of ancient authors, "^^ is a not inac- 
curate. Sixteenth Century explanation of the connexion 
between the new life and classical times. The reflective 
mind harked back to antiquity because only there could 
it find the satisfactions of its desire for reason, order and 
clarity. In this sense the history of Renaissance scholar- 
ship is of far greater importance than that of learning at 
any other time, because it had to do with the criticism 
of man by himself and of his evolution toward the modern 
world. 



11. THE IDEA OF FAME 

England which accepted the ideas of Renaissance more 
placidly than Italy gave less thought to the pursuit of 
fame. The excessive v/ish for glory and craving for immor- 
tality, made no real appeal to the English nature though 
it cannot be overlooked in any study of the age's ideals. 
Even a poetaster like Skelton had the audacity to write 
sixteen hundred lines in self-praise where he calls on all 
the famous poets of antiquity to do him honour.^ 

The wish for immortality formed part of the baggage 
of a classical education. Erasmus could write of himself, 
that he would live forever read by all the world, and 
Gawain Douglas ending his translation of the Mneid para- 
phrased Horace 

"The better part of me shall be upheld 
Above the stars perpetually to ring." ^ 

Such talk had been heard before from Italian human- 
ists who travelled over Europe professing the ability to 
confer immortality,^ although Thomas More put into 
the mouth of Pico della Mirandola, that often fame hurt 
men while they lived and did them no benefit after death. 

The expression of the wish for glory was more frequently 
to be found in letters than in the conscious shaping of life. 
Henry VIII's early desire for renown proved to be a 
transient phase in his nature, though certain satisfac- 
tions given to his vanity were later served up by Sir Je- 
rome Bowes, the British Ambassador to Muscovy, when 
he impressed Ivan the Terrible with the greatness of 
Queen Elizabeth by relating that her father had kept an 
Emperor in his pay.^ 

None of Henry VIII's children mounting the throne 

2S9 



26o TUDOR IDEALS 

felt any overwhelming ambition. Contemporaries allege 
that among the reasons which dissuaded Elizabeth from 
matrimony, was the fear lest it detract from her personal 
glory. Far more likely it was her personal authority that 
she felt would then be in danger. The dread of infamy 
with posterity certainly did not deter her from the execu- 
tion of Mary Stuart. 

The pursuit of fame hardly formed a goal by itself, but 
was regarded as a desire common to all men. Its stimulus 
was enhanced by classical ideas, a wider public, and the 
vast new opportunities favoured by an age of individual 
effort. Men felt that their achievements would be known. 
Horizons opened by the Renaissance offered fame as a 
reward to those who dared. Tamburlaine, the robber 
chief, aspires to win glory — 

" because being yet obscure, 
The nations of the earth admire me not," ^ 

Richard Grenville dying after his memorable fight declared 
that his soul would leave behind an everlasting fame. 

The poet Barnfield could write the well-known epitaph 
of Hawkins 

" The waters were his binding sheet 
The sea was made his tomb, 
Yet for his fame the ocean was 
Not sufficient room." 

Freebooter though he was, Drake deliberately sought 
fame. His ship was preserved as a national monument. 
Some even thought that he ordered the execution of 
Doughty because he saw in the latter "an emulator of 
his glory. "^ 

The wish for celebrity then led men toward danger. 
Languet wrote to Sidney imploring him not to allow an 
excessive desire for fame to cause him to incur undue risk.'^ 
Hero worship made it unseemly for anyone of quality 
long after his death to appear at court in gaudy apparel. 



THE IDEA OF FAME 261 

Spenser could say that "life is not lost for which is bought 
endless renown that more than death is to be sought." 
With more generosity than critical sense he assigned 
immortality freely to many of his contemporaries who 
with little baggage claimed entrance to Olympus. 

The Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey depends, as is 
known, on a fortunate accident. That in the Sixteenth 
Century, this could be seized upon and that the pens which 
wrote the mournful elegies on Spenser's death were after- 
ward thrown into his tomb, shows a consciousness of poetic 
dignity and fame peculiarly appropriate for one who like 
Spenser found compensation for earthly misery in post- 
humous glory. 

Such desire stimulated many a writer. Bacon could 
aptly say that the monuments of the mind were more 
lasting than those of power and recalled the verses of 
Homer continuing unchanged for twenty-five hundred 
years without the loss of a syllable, during which time 
cities and temples had decayed and perished. He himself 
advocated the building of enduring monuments. Already 
a century earlier in Italy the statues of the great Con- 
dottieri and the Malatesta Temple at Rimini, showed the 
desire to consecrate fame by the graven image. Save for 
the tomb, there was no corresponding wish for similar 
monuments in England till Bacon in his "New Atlantis " 
suggested a gallery to contain the statues of all great 
discoverers. 

Bacon repeats elsewhere Ariosto's fine image, how at 
the end of the thread of every man's life was suspended a 
medal with his name. Time waited with shears and when 
the thread was cut, caught the medal and carried it to 
the river of Lethe. Above its banks flew many birds who 
would fish up the medals and carry these in their beaks for 
a little while, and then let them fall into the river. Yet 
there were a few swans who if they found a name would 
carry it to a temple where it remained forever conse- 
crated. 



III. DEATH 

Spiritually, at least, life in medieval times was re- 
garded as a preparation for death. The imagination had 
then been most impressed by the mutability of all that 
is human. A gloomy view was taken of the physical 
horror of death, for the spirit of the Middle Ages was more 
external than is commonly realized, and even its mys- 
ticism rested largely on a physical basis. Death was the 
great leveller. 

"Death acclaim how all things must die 
Pope, Emperor, King, Baron and Knight." ^ 

With the Sixteenth Century, ancient philosophy came 
to bear on the problems of life and stoicism with a few 
elect could help to get the better of physical apprehen- 
sion. Thomas More, ardent Christian though he was, 
displayed a spirit worthy of a hero of Plutarch, in his 
famous answer to the Duke of Norfolk who was urging 
him in order to save his head, to yield to the king. "Then 
in good faith the difference between your grace and me 
is but this, that I shall die to-day and you to-morrow. "^ 
Toward the end of the century, Humphrey Gilbert in 
his memorial to the queen, showed the influence of antiq- 
uity when he wrote — "He is not worthy to live at all 
that for fear or danger of death shunneth his country's ser- 
vice and his own honour, seeing that death is inevitable 
and the fame of virtue immortal. " 

Classical influence brought about a different attitude 
from the medieval toward death. It was no longer re- 
garded as an isolated physical fact but was considered 
in its relation to life itself, and as an alternative to moral 
circumstances. Marlowe says — 

262 



DEATH 263 

"Weep not for Mortimer 
' That scorns the world and as a traveller 
Goes to discover countries yet unknown." 
(Edw. II; V, VI, 63, sq.) 

The finer minds of the Renaissance felt something of 
the spirit of ancient philosophy and a supposed agnos- 
tic like Raleigh could write on the eve of his own execu- 
tion : 

"Of death and judgment, heaven and hell 
Who oft doth think must needs die well." 

The justification of suicide was of purely pagan lineage, 
yet Spenser's Red Cross Knight arriving at the Cave of 
Despair almost succumbed to this temptation.^ Bacon, 
as is well known, advocated euthanasia and regarded it 
as the physician's duty to soften the agony of death. 

Was it training or pride, which then made men and 
women mount the scaffold with lofty courage. It could 
not always have been the wish for admiration, such as 
Malcolm felt for Cawdor's conduct. There was a fatalism 
in the spirit of the time, and a moral preparation for death 
which came from the continuous neighbourhood of danger. 
Nothing could surpass the high courage of Anne Boleyn 
at the moment of execution.^ Protesting her innocence 
she felt no regret at death, perhaps because the charge 
for which she suffered was the only one of which she was 
completely guiltless. Katherine Howard died with no 
less resolution.^ Others, like Lady Jane Grey, approached 
the scaffold with the courage born of youth. The ex- 
hortation she wrote at the end of her New Testament, the 
night before her execution, lives as a memorial of one 
of the noblest of women. ^ So Mary Stuart entered the 
execution chamber with the same majesty and grace as 
in a ball room.^ Essex's courage in his trial and at his 
execution was immensely admired. "His chief care was 
to leave a good opinion in the people's minds now at 
parting. " ^ 



264 TUDOR IDEALS 

In his "Commonwealth of England" Sir Thomas Smith 
had remarked that it was in the nature of Englishmen to 
neglect death, and praised the resolution of malefactors 
on their way to execution. There was pride in not 
wishing to show fear before the unavoidable. Babing- 
ton's apparent unconcern in watching the disembowel- 
ling of his accomplice Ballard, although himself about 
to suffer the same horrible death, was set down to such 
pride.^ Yet the fear of death was more common than 
might be supposed, and Latimer speaks of it as worse than 
death itself. ^° Vast contrasts were to be noted and per- 
haps the only real distinction between then and now was 
the complete indifference with which the death of others 
was regarded. 

Edward VI records the fact, as simply as he does cold- 
bloodedly, that his uncle " the Duke of Somerset had his 
head cut off on Tower Hill on the 22nd of January 155 1-2 
between eight and nine o'clock in the morning."" Not 
a gleam of pity or regret went out to one who had been 
his ablest and most devoted adviser. 

If death failed to affect its witnesses, it was often other- 
wise with those who were to suffer. Sir Thomas Wyatt 
the Younger begged pitifully for his life after his unsuc- 
cessful rebellion. The Duke of Northumberland recant- 
ing his protestantism entreated even for the life of a dog. 
Not all could face death with resolution. Essex's fellow 
prisoner. Lord Southampton, imploring the queen's mercy, 
gave the impression of seeming "too loth to die." Like 
Claudio in " Measure for Measure " there were those who 
in time of death to save themselves were ready to stoop 
to any degree of abjection. 

No generalization about the Renaissance attitude to- 
ward life or death would hold true. All it is possible to 
say, is that the purely Christian attitude of death inherited 
from the Middle Ages, had been succeeded by one in- 
fluenced from classical sources, and in its wide diversity 
approaching the modern point of view. 



IV. THE FEELING FOR NATURE 

A BRIEF note on the feeling for nature is in place. The 
emotional response to the inner sentiment of an age is 
usually too delicate to create a more permanent mould. 
Before the Renaissance spiritual life remained little devel- 
oped outside the walls of religion. Even the comprehen- 
sion of nature which usually marks a craving for the inner 
life is absent before comparatively modern times. In the 
Fifteenth Century an English traveller could cross the 
St. Gothard blindfold not to see the dangers of the road. 

With the Renaissance began a kind of intermediate 
stage toward the understanding of nature. Lear, wan- 
dering in the storm, is impressed by something deeper 
than the inclemency of the elements. Roger Ascham 
has described, in the spirit of Gilbert White, a winter ride 
near Cambridge,^ over fields covered with crusted snow 
on which the sunshine played. Most of our knowledge of 
nature springs from the poets, and it is necessary in their 
case to divorce convention from real feeling. The appeal 
made by nature to poetry in the Sixteenth Century did 
not differ very considerably from that of previous ages. 
Skelton could catalogue wild fowl and song birds with no 
small learning yet find little real pleasure in their song. 
Gawain Douglas showed keen observation of externals 
and delighted in nature as it appealed to the medieval 
mind, in such representations of sowers and harvesters 
as may still be admired in the Breviary of the Duke de 
Berri. He remained unable to identify himself with the 
elements, like Shelley, nor draw moral lessons from nature, 
like Wordsworth. 

The love of nature on the part of the early English 
poets was mainly one of description of birds and flowers 
rather than of its wilder aspects. Wyatt, it is true, 

26s 



266 TUDOR IDEALS 

mentions the Alps with modern feeling, while Surrey's 
descriptions of Windsor Forest contain glimpses of a new 
vision. But most references are mere catalogues of pleas- 
ing natural objects arranged in poetical fancies without 
attempt to penetrate further. The effect of such allu- 
sions in many poets of the age is pretty, but rarely more 
subtle and always lacking in grandeur. English pasto- 
ralism, healthy and fresh and taking real pleasure in 
wood-life and the "forest green," did not get beyond the 
convention of certain stock subjects. Even Shakespeare 
usually sees nature in this light though his genius becomes 
modern in the oft quoted lines. 

"And this one life exempt from public haunt 
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks 
Sermons in stones and good in everything." 

He described the sufferings of the hunted deer in "As You 
Like It," and of the hare in "Venus and Adonis" with 
more than rhetorical sympathy for the beast. The human 
appeal of the Renaissance had awakened hitherto unknown 
feelings toward dumb beasts. Thomas More made his 
Utopians relegate hunting to the butchers, regarding it 
as the most abject part of slaughter.^ Such ideas long 
dormant through the century were afterward taken up 
under another form. Whatever faults may be charged 
to Puritanism, it stood against cruelty shown animals and 
attacked bearbaiting in the name of religion on the 
ground that no creature is to be abused as all are made 
by God.^ 



V. THE PLEASURE OF THE COUNTRY 

The pleasure of the garden was introduced on a large 
scale in the Sixteenth Century. Italian influence showed 
itself in the English gardens of the period at Hampton 
Court and at Nonesuch, with its columns and pyramids of 
marble and spouting fountains. Lord Burleigh's gardens 
at Theobald with their labyrinths and elaborate water 
arrangements and their busts of Roman Emperors be- 
came show places.^ For the first time new conditions 
of security and the growth of wealth allowed of a vast 
increase of stately houses, gardens, pools and parks, till 
nature dressed to the eye formed part of a suitable en- 
vironment to the residences of the great. The garden, no 
longer merely for the herbalist, became the province of 
architects, engineers and sculptors. The taste for garden- 
ing in England was, however, more finicky than in Italy. 
The wildness of the Italian distant perspective formed no 
part of the more domesticated English horizon. 

Enjoyment of the country springs from one of the deep- 
est instincts in man, but its expression has always varied 
in accordance with the prevailing conditions of security, of 
possession, and even of comfort. During the Middle Ages, 
the feudal structure resting on a basis of land tenure, caused 
a very practical feeling toward the land and contributed 
to restrict its appreciation to perceptions of detail, or else 
to vague and indefinite professions of pleasure. In the 
Tudor period, however, a double phenomenon took place, 
which in no way connected in origin or cause made for the 
same result. The awakened consciousness of man with 
the sense of growth in his own development, brought about 
a keener sense of nature than less articulate and ruder ages 
had possessed. There is no need to look for this only in 
the expressions of poets. The general conditions of life 

267 



268 TUDOR IDEALS 

existed for the first time in England which permitted the 
broad diffusion of this taste. 

The Tudor centraHzation of power carried with it an 
altered perspective toward the land. Instead of regard- 
ing it as the unit of national life by its associations and 
traditions, for the first time since antiquity, it became, so 
to speak, desocialized and for one brief period, at least, its 
possession implied no further obligation. The economic 
consequences of this change with its reactions in agricul- 
tural disturbances, and its visible result in deerparks and 
enclosures, have often been commented on, but less at- 
tention has been paid to the evolution this movement 
betokened, in regarding nature as a field for pleasurable 
enjoyment. Coarse-grained lawyers enriched with monk- 
ish spoils and merchants fresh from the city acquired this 
feeling. They could indulge in the pleasure of the country 
and feel a certain survival of consideration, which handed 
down from former ages was readily transferred to the 
holder of landed property irrespective of his origin. 

The English structure of life has always been more ru- 
ral than urban. So little was a residence in London to 
the taste of country gentlemen, that it had been found 
necessary to enact a statute forbidding these to absent 
themselves from Parliament. A writer who had lived long 
abroad with his mind fixed on the palaces which adorn 
even the smallest Italian town, suggested that the gentry 
should be induced to build houses in the city. Continual 
residence in the country "is a great rudeness and a bar- 
barous custom."^ 

The lack of important industry until a comparatively 
late period, left city life in England of less importance 
than in Italy or in the Low Countries. The fact that the 
British social fabric was already firmly established long 
before the nation became industrialized, allowed the 
countryside, so to speak, to steal a march on the city and 
has been among the causes which until recent times made 
for the sacrificed existence of the latter in much that con- 



THE PLEASURE OF THE COUNTRY 269 

cerns the more durable pleasures of life. Property engen- 
ders roots and roots engender respect. Position was at- 
tained through the country and rarely through the town. 
Even after the decay of feudalism, country life carried 
with it a prestige derived from older associations. Hos- 
pitality was generously extended. The chivalrous tra- 
ditions inherited from feudal times survived after the 
spirit of the castle had disappeared. Lord Shrewsbury, 
in spite of the risk, received the disgraced Wolsey at Shef- 
field Park on his last journey with the utmost courtesy. 

English country life became established on its modern 
basis during the Sixteenth Century. The novel condi- 
tions of stability and order, the diffusion of luxury and 
the rise of a new propertied class, were all circumstances 
which made for its appreciation and which in turn were 
to be productive of a domesticated idea of nature. An- 
other cause contributing to this result was entirely intel- 
lectual. The revival of classical antiquity and its lesson 
both direct and indirect, through text, translation and con- 
tinental influence, added to this feeling, and by an odd 
paradox, dusty manuscripts helped to arouse the sense 
of nature. Men loved the country more after they had 
read Theocritus and Virgil, while so artificial a growth as 
the pastoral comedy could by devious paths throw back 
to nature. 

The ideal of the Renaissance was that of action in the 
service of the state. But those who most successfully 
obeyed this call, felt the want of an alternative and 
a refuge, if only for old age. Partly influenced by an- 
cient philosophical ideas, partly by inclinations fathered 
by new conditions of life, the country could be regarded 
as a normal residence for whoever was not actively em- 
ployed. Men turned toward it naturally as a place of 
abode where they could freely indulge their tastes. The 
destruction of the feudal system made the country possi- 
ble for a pleasurable life and opened it to all comers. An 
ideal of life was then formed, which looked toward a 



270 TUDOR IDEALS 

tranquil and cultivated existence in the independence of 
a country home. 

"This maketh me at home to hunt and hawk 
And in foul weather at my book to sit," ^ 

wrote Wyatt describing his pleasures far away from the 
atmosphere of the court. 



VI. THE DESIRE FOR BEAUTY 

Italian art won an easy victory over a disintegrating 
medievalism north of the Alps, The new standard of 
taste which came out of the Italian Renaissance was every- 
where blended differently and often the immediate in- 
fluence was less important than where this came indirectly. 

The gulf between Italy and England had been too wide 
to be bridged over as easily as in France. Florentine mas- 
ters at Fontainebleau could plant a tree able, at once, 
to shoot out its own roots, but the Italian artists in Eng- 
land left no direct influence behind them. The tombs by 
Torrigiano at Westminster, show how heavy handed and 
Gothic that sculptor became away from the sharp criti- 
cism of his native soil. Want of appreciation offered slight 
incentive to the foreign artist mainly concerned with his 
material reward. The Tuscan craftsmen who worked at 
Hampton Court were only an importation of little more 
than fleeting importance. The first attempt to introduce 
Italian art ended in virtual failure.^ 

Obscure Italians like the "Sergeant painter" Antonio 
Toto remained in England,^ but the real influence to which 
native art responded passed through the Low Countries. 
This may have been due to the fact that so many of the 
early English painters like Streetes, were Dutch or Flem- 
ings, but also because medieval realism in art which sur- 
vived in England incompletely fused with the new spirit, 
was nearer to the standard of the Netherlands. 

Art was largely a craft and even Holbein's career had 
begun by painting shopkeepers' signs. Its practical utility 
came through portraiture, which satisfied the aesthetic de- 
mands of the wealthy. The new self-consciousness con- 
tributed to this result. Man for the first time cherished 
a wish to preserve his likeness. When Sir Thomas Chal- 

271 



272 TUDOR IDEALS 

oner translated the "Prize of Folly," his description of 
its merits dwelt on the fact that the reader would herein 
"see his own image more lively described than in any 
painted table. " 

The desire for beauty was never so stirring a passion 
in England as in Italy. It was all the more remarkable 
for Henry VIII, almost without stimulus or atmosphere 
about him save the wish to rival King Francis, to have 
indulged his native taste to such advantage. In this he 
showed himself to be a true prince of the Renaissance, 
more Latin than English, who called on the arts to set 
a richer framework for his majesty. Wolsey may have 
initiated his sovereign toward such appreciation, for the 
great Cardinal was full of the desire for magnificence, 
and possessed a real love of beauty and a collector's taste 
which made him purchase paintings in the Low Countries. 
His fondness for tapestries was notorious. To reach his 
audience chamber, wrote the Venetian Ambassador Gius- 
tiniani, one had to traverse eight rooms all hung with 
arras changed weekly. 

Outside the court a survival of medieval luxury still " 
existed in England. There were many artistic treasures 
left in the monasteries, and Skelton describes these hung 
in tapestry representing 

"Dame Diana naked 
How lusty Venus quaked 
And how Cupid shaked 
His dart and bent his bow." ^ 

A profusion of plate existed in the houses of merchants 
and innkeepers, where it astonished foreign travellers un- 
accustomed to such display. It was more prized, however, 
for its intrinsic than for its artistic value. The medieval 
traditions of craftsmanship in England had largely disap- 
peared or degenerated. In a land still in many respects 
crude, there was slight reason to expect any deep aesthetic 
craving seeking sensuous expression. The attempts of 



THE DESIRE FOR BEAUTY 273 

exalted patronage to introduce this artificially remained 
stillborn. The builders' art alone survived as a practical 
necessity, and the diffusion of riches discovered in archi- 
tecture, as in portraiture, its first aesthetic satisfactions. 

The feeling that external adornment marked a certain 
station in life was increasing, and the diffusion of wealth 
unconsciously did what the king's example could not. 
The wish grew for luxurious comfort hitherto unknown. 
Continental example reinforced this. Sir Thomas Elyot, 
fresh from diplomatic missions abroad, urged men of 
rank to hang their houses with tapestry and to possess 
painted tables, images and engraved plate.^ In Italy, 
France and the Low .Countries he had seen the arts en- 
tering increasingly into cultivated life. Doubtless in- 
fluenced by Castiglione's example he was the first in 
England who sought to include art in a gentleman's 
education and have painting and sculpture taught to 
whoever showed inclination therefor.^ 

The arts in his ideal of education were regarded no 
longer as crafts unworthy of a gentleman's attention but 
as containing an inherent nobility. Far from degrading 
whoever practiced them, Elyot recalled the fact that 
Roman Emperors like Titus and Hadrian were artists. 
The Sixteenth Century in England was too freshly out 
of the Middle Ages not to have inherited many of its prej- 
udices which the wave of the Renaissance had only parti- 
ally submerged. Among these was the broad abyss which 
separated artists from a gentleman's consideration. Long 
medieval isolation had kept them on an inferior plane as 
.craftsmen. The Renaissance idea which brought out the 
universal elements of life, lifted the arts out of what had 
become a lowering of their general status. 

Such ideas were imperfectly accepted by many whose 
vision remaining narrowed by the past refused to admit 
the value of new elements. It was owing to this reaction 
that the revelation of the Renaissance remained incom- 
plete. It could never rid life of prejudice born in another 



274 TUDOR IDEALS 

age. In a similar field, Puttenham blamed those gentlemen 
poets to whom the publicity of print seemed a vulgari- 
zation "as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seem 
learned and to show himself amorous of any good art." 
Prejudices possess a tough life and after the real Renais- 
sance was over, others expressed the conviction that paint- 
ing could no longer be accounted "fit for a gentleman."^ 

Elyot's own portrait had been painted by Holbein, 
but his understanding of art hardly went beyond an ad- 
miration for ancient sculpture. The classical writers 
awakened this interest from its literary side where it was 
often confined to the repetition of stale anecdotes. Oddly 
enough in one of the greatest ages of art, the only inter- 
est taken by many was apparently restricted to hack- 
neyed tales about Greek sculptors. Esthetic enjoyment 
was still beyond the ken of even the most cultivated Eng- 
lishmen whose feeling toward art was purely intellectual, 
and derived from the accepted standards of a culture 
which they freely recognized as superior to their own. 

Wide interest was taken only in classical sculpture, es- 
pecially by those who had been to Italy and felt the "ap- 
preciation there evoked by the records of antiquity."^ 
Such passing references as may be found to the great Ital- 
ians of that time, were generally due to a bland accept- 
ance of the esteem in which they were held by their own 
countrymen. Michelangelo's personal greatness was im- 
pressed on every traveller, but the beauty of Italian art 
remained foreign to the English temperament. One of the 
few exceptions to this was Sir Thomas Wyatt whose de- 
scription of a marble statue of David is, almost certainly, 
a reminiscence of the one by Michelangelo, which he must 
have seen when passing through Florence on his way to 
Rome. 

"David seemed in the place 
A marble image of singular reverence 
Carved in the rock with eyes and hand on high 
Made as by craft to plain, to sob, to sigh." ^ 



THE DESIRE FOR BEAUTY 275 

In his account of the massacre by the Spaniards at the 
sack of Antwerp, George Gascoigne wrote that "a man 
might behold as many shapes and forms of men's mo- 
tion at time of death as even Michelangelo did portray 
in his Tables of Doomsday." ^ Travellers like Fynes 
Moryson praised the Sixtine Chapel and the skill of the 
Italians in the arts.^" Their genius was still far removed 
from normal English comprehension, and such lip worship 
is less expressive of native opinion than of accepted com- 
monplaces imbibed by travel and convention. When Shake- 
speare described a marvellous statue by the painter Giulio 
Romano,^^ he was merely repeating the hackneyed opin- 
ion which praised Italian art indiscriminately without dis- 
tinguishing painters from sculptors. The English mind 
accepted without question this superiority, though attach- 
ing slight importance to a side of life it could neither 
grasp nor emulate. The aesthetic impulse expressed by the 
graphic arts had hardly been awakened. Proof of this can 
be seen in Richard Haydocke drawing a parallel between 
English painters and Italian, and comparing Nicholas Hil- 
liard to Raphael. ^^ Francis Meres, with the ignorance of 
his insularism, compared John Bettes and Christopher 
Switser to Pheidias and Praxiteles. ^^ 

The English aesthetic sense, still too immature to appre- 
ciate more than the direct presentation of realism, re- 
mained unable to discriminate beyond. Idealism fired 
its poets but left its painters cold and their conception 
humble. Oddly enough, the most interesting fragment 
of contemporary criticism of what art could mean, came 
from a theologian and popular preacher. In his " Sermon 
before the King," Latimer remarked that "Painters paint 
death like a man without a skin and a body having noth- 
ing but bones. And hell they paint it horrible flames of 
burning fire; they bungle somewhat at it, they come 
nothing near it. But this is no true painting; no painter 
could paint hell unless he could paint the torment and con- 
demnation both of body and soul. "^^ His idea is strangely 



276 TUDOR IDEALS 

akin to the futurist wish to depict the inner state of the 
mind. 

The diffusion of wealth and culture gradually aroused 
a taste for art. An enlightened patronage existed long 
before native painters attained even mediocrity. Trav- 
ellers from Italy and France brought back the collector's 
taste. Nicholas Hovel, a dealer in paintings and antiques, 
offered Lord Burghley for the queen, a collection which 
had taken him twenty-five years to form and which in- 
cluded the works of French, Italian and German paint- 
ers. ^^ Interest in art was more widely diffused, though 
not until the Stuarts did it become general among the 
upper classes, when writers like Peacham " made ap- 
peal to this new taste. Before him Richard Haydocke 
spoke of this interest among the nobility and gentry "as 
may appear by their galleries carefully furnished with the 
excellent monuments of sundry famous ancient painters 
both Italian and German." ^^ And already he could la- 
ment the neglect in which the descendants of collectors 
had allowed their treasures to fall. 



VII. PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN LIFE 

The surprising feature of Renaissance philosophy before 
Bacon is its absence of originaHty. It aimed to be prac- 
tical and concerned itself more with the conduct of life 
than with abstract speculation. The philosopher was 
said to be one who could realize "the life of men at all 
times, in all places, in all passions and generally in all af- 
fairs." The Renaissance conception of the meaning of 
philosophy was that of moral conduct in action. 

A wish for action more than for contemplation ran 
through the age. This left its reflective sides without 
much body and never quite able to shake off scholastic 
origins, which even out of favour, kept their grip on 
the mind. The only alternative for these lay in antiq- 
uity. Philosophical speculation, such as it was, looked to 
classical example to replace theology. When in " Measure 
for Measure " the Duke disguised as a friar, reasons with 
Claudio condemned to death, on the futility of life, his 
argument is no longer religious but Stoic. How far this 
represents Shakespeare's own views, is of slight impor- 
tance before the fact that the thoughts of the age were 
now based on a secular ideal which unconsciously traced 
its intellectual pedigree to antiquity. Its full revelation 
entered English life only when this became unnoticeable 
by its familiarity. 

Philosophical reflections were derived mainly from the 
direct inspiration of classical sources. The new belief 
of the Renaissance was that of man in himself, and his 
own unbounded capacity which he could extend through 
knowledge. Christianity could be judiciously blended 
with the higher paganism, and many a thinker of that 
age, without difficulty reconciled Nazareth with Athens. 

277 



278 TUDOR IDEALS 

The exceptional favour then enjoyed by the Neo-PIaton- 
ists was due to nothing else. 

The birth of modern philosophy was no native growth 
but a graft on a very ancient stock. Classical example 
shaped the world of thought. To the extent it made men 
imitative, it left philosophy fragmentary and partial, in- 
stead of constructive. The new seeds had been scattered 
far and wide, sown almost without plan or order and 
another age had to come before these could ripen. The 
Renaissance, in revolt against the rigid scholastic struc- 
ture, collected its material haphazardly and uncritically 
for the future to digest. It piled up its wealth without 
fixing beforehand the avenues of access to its riches. 
Something more was needed before these could be laid 
out. A tradition had to be built before more delicate 
perceptions could begin this task. 

The consciousness of man expressed by means of direct 
philosophical abstractions, represented a trend of thought 
still alien to the English mind of the Sixteenth Century. 
The complete break with the Middle Ages had not yet 
taken place. Under Henry VIII, hardly any traces can 
be found of intellectual speculation. For one thing, man 
was not sufficiently articulate to express his subtler 
thoughts in terms of theory. Intellectual abstractions 
went mainly into theology and partly into statecraft. 

An early expression of philosophical ideas in England 
is to be found in Spenser, who like Italian thinkers of 
the early Renaissance, reconciled Christianity with Platon- 
ism and found in celestial beauty a religious ideal. His 
hymns were inspired by the study of Plato and the feeling 
of divinity. Though there is nothing original in his ideas, 
he phrased Platonism with the poet's art. All that is 
good is beautiful and fair, and everything save the con- 
templation of heavenly beauty is naught. 

"All other sights but feigned shadows be." 

It is a poor test for poetry to seek in it any deep philo- 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN LIFE 279 

sophical truth. Yet the ideas underlying " The Tempest " 
offer a symbol of the Renaissance. Brute force becomes 
subjected to the intellect. Life no longer as medieval 
theology had seen it, came to be regarded for the first time 
as a struggle whose justification was found in the victory of 
mind over matter and in the enlarged horizon before man. 
Even the achievements of navigators entered into the 
realm of philosophy with the discovery of the Bermudas. 

The philosophical ideas of a Prospero, or of a Hamlet, 
express a far dreamier and less practical side of the Eliza- 
bethan age than is commonly supposed to be its charac- 
teristic. It is unfair to any time or nation, to restrict 
its traits solely within certain accepted grooves and 
exclude everything else as unrepresentative. Shake- 
speare better than anyone, proves the absurdity of such 
reasoning by showing how the wealth of an age springs 
from diversity. To take any other view is wilfully to re- 
strict one's vision. His own dream of the ideal state as set 
forth in the "Tempest" is hardly original, except in the 
sense that ideas acquire originality by differing from their 
prototype. The communism of Gonzalo, like that of 
More's Utopians, was mainly a vague aspiration toward 
justice with little belief in its practical reality. 

In war-disturbed Ireland surrounded by rebels, a church- 
man, a soldier, an apothecary, and some civil servants 
could meet and discuss those questions which have con- 
cerned philosophers in every age and talk of virtue, 
honour and the soul as shaping the life of man.^ Their 
conversations form the subject of one of the earliest 
philosophical books in English written by Spenser's friend 
Lodovyck Bryskett, but which enjoyed slight popularity. 
The tendency of the British mind was far more positive 
and practical than abstract. Its real greatness came out 
in the scientific achievement of a Harvey, a Gilbert, and 
a Napier. 

Pure philosophy was, foreign to the British nature. 
Intellectual speculation is more often the product of 



28o TUDOR IDEALS 

a nation In repose. A period of keen advancement, of 
buoyant spirits, and rapid change, is careless of values 
whose approach lies through theory. Especially in Eng- 
land the foundations of philosophical reasoning were still 
non-existent except in an antiquated form. Works like 
Du Vair's treatise on stoical philosophy were translated ^ 
and several of Giordano Bruno's books were printed in 
London. The dialogues he dedicated to Sidney, and his 
mention of men like Fulke Greville and Sir Toby Matthew, 
show the existence of a small circle interested in philo- 
sophical speculation who lived outside academic portals. 
Such appeal was made only to a select few. 

The non-speculative mind of the Englishman was con- 
tent to take his philosophy at second hand and especially 
from Aristotle, whose " Ethics " were translated from the 
Italian, and whose " Politics " from the French. There was 
no attempt made to construct an original system. Even 
thinkers like More were chiefly interested in social prob- 
lems. Philosophy meant mainly disquisitions on specu- 
lative topics in which Platonic ideas were usually intro- 
duced.^ Bryskett admitted this absence of sympathy and 
contrasted the inferiority of England to Italy in this re- 
spect. 

The man of cultivation needed no philosophical sys- 
tem to express his idea of conduct. The search for this 
was nothing new for medieval contemplation also had 
sought to find such a standard. The novelty of the Re- 
naissance lay in secularizing this. Even Cardinal Allen's 
Secretary, Roger Bayne, in his " Praise of Solitariness," 
the scene of which takes place in Venice, discusses the 
eternal question of the merits of the active and the con- 
templative life, and which the wise man should seek, the 
answer being that he should know how to apply himself to 
both. When duty summoned he must be ready to leave 
solitude to sacrifice his life for his country. Others like Sir 
Richard Barckley and Sir William Cornwallis revived the 
same timeworn themes. Philosophical speculation hardly 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN LIFE 281 

went beyond this. It was left for a Pole, Grimaldus Gos- 
licius, whose work was translated into EngHsh, best to 
express this ideaL Affirming that the three kinds of hves 
were of action, contemplation and pleasure, he added: 
"Whoso therefore desireth to live virtuously and happily 
must participate both of the civil and philosophical lives 
which are action and contemplation." 

Poets sung the contemplative ideal. The instability 
of mortal things had always been a favourite subject 
for medieval expression. The charm of the placid, found 
itself praised in an age of action. Sir Edward Dyer's 
self-complacent lines "My mind to me a kingdom is" 
breathes the Horatian spirit in its goal of repose. 

A point of View which was later to evolve the practical 
basis for an intellectual foundation of life was then in the 
moulding. The new conception of modernity was already 
shaping men's thoughts. Gabriel Harvey with nothing 
of the pedant, could write to Spenser that the most im- 
portant thing in life was to live, and the ideal of a con- 
templative existence which regarded as unlawful all 
bodily and sensual pleasures was a stale and bookish 
opinion. 

The basis of future philosophical speculation was being 
laid by science. The intellectual curiosity of the Re- 
naissance branched out toward an interest in natural his- 
tory far beyond that of the medieval bestiary. Hakluyt 
who had frequent occasion to mention strange plants and 
animals alludes to the collections of natural history 
formed with great effort by his friends Richard Garthe 
and William Cope.^ Medicine too profited by this new 
interest. Where David Lyndsay could make the king's 
physician and surgeon appear ridiculous by causing them 
to joust by royal command, the ignorance of the medical 
profession for the first time impressed men as a serious 
deficiency. Stubbes demanded that all doctors be grad- 
uates of Universities and well paid by the State to attend 
the poor, in order to remedy the gross scandal which 



282 TUDOR IDEALS 

allowed any ignorant person to assume the title and habit 
of a physician.^ A new devotion made Thomas Lodge, 
doctor as well as poet, with a fine sense of professional 
duty which then was rare, remain at his post to attend 
the poor during the plague in London. 

First in England, Bacon realized the possibilities of 
science. Aloof and isolated in his ideas with not even the 
knowledge of his countrymen's scientific discoveries, he 
was the true child of the Renaissance even to the circum- 
stances of his death brought on by a chill caught in obser- 
ving the effect of snow in preserving the body of a hen. 
Without prejudice or reverence he demolished the be- 
lief in the irrational. His creed was the sovereignty of 
man through science built on experience. "Printing" a 
gross achievement, artillery and the needle. What a 
change have these three words made in the world. Yet 
they had been stumbled on by chance. In knowledge, he 
wrote, lay the future ot mankind "wherein many things 
are reserved which kings with their treasure cannot buy 
nor with their force command." The wish contained in 
the "New Atlantis" for centralized bureaus to collect 
and record scientific data and undertake experiments, 
foreshadows the ideas of our own age. 

Bacon in the same sense as Shakespeare ceases to be 
typical. It is the penalty of genius that it stands alone 
and its height measures its isolation. Those less scien- 
tific offer safer tests — Spenser, for instance, who is never 
thought of as a man of science, was modern in his anthro- 
pological speculations. After dismissing the Irish claim 
to Spanish descent, which he regards as emanating from 
vanity owing to the prestige of Spain, he says in words 
which could be written to day: 

"There is no nation now in Christendom nor much fur- 
ther, but is mingled and compounded with others." This 
he regards as providential as it makes all people united by 
blood.^ Though he wanders into fantasy when trying to 
fasten a Scythian origin on the Irish his method of rea- 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN LIFE 283 

soning is one of the first evidences of a study of primitive 
culture.® 

Alongside of a new scientific interest one stands con- 
fronted by the tragic effects of ignorance exercising a more 
powerful sway than before. Superstition can never be 
segregated within an age of ignorance. All too easily the 
contrary may be proved and examples culled from every 
direction and time. Yet in any larger outlook where val- 
ues are expanded and exceptions disregarded, the effects 
of superstition tend to fall back into dark periods. Among 
the triumphs of the Renaissance was that of having shat- 
tered many of the most glaring abuses which attached 
themselves to the veneration of images and shrines. 

Because of political purposes the grossest medieval su- 
perstitions which clung to the wonder-working powers 
of relics were attacked and largely destroyed. But the 
spirit of superstition was not so easily shaken. Wolsey 
firmly believed in omens and interpreted insignificant 
acts in their light.^ The Nun of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, 
was believed by him as by Warham and More, to have 
been divinely inspired when from her cell at Canterbury 
she gave heavenly orders to the Pope himself. Super- 
stition became dangerous in its political reactions and 
the Nun's prophecies were made use of by those who op- 
posed the king's divorce. Belief in the supernatural can 
hardly be isolated from other factors, and much that is 
otherwise unexplicable in the past, comes from the recol- 
lection of immediate interest being effaced, leaving only 
the grosser elements to wonder at. After all allowances 
have been made, there still remained a vast amount of 
credulity. ^° 

Reformers who were ready to attack wonder-working 
relics were themselves quite as prone to believe in witch- 
craft. The persecution of the unfortunates accused of 
sorcery tells a tragic story. The belief was found al- 
most everywhere. John Penry speaks of the "swarms 
of soothsayers and enchanters" in Wales who professed 



284 TUDOR IDEALS 

to walk at night with the fairies. ^^ The English soldiers 
were convinced that the Irish were possessed of the power 
of witchcraft "and this belief doth much daunt our sol- 
diers when they come to deal with the Irishry.^^ When 
King James himself was a believer in witches and boasted 
that the devil saw in him his greatest enemy, it is not sur- 
prising that the masses should have been superstitious. 
Other forms less tragic in result could be seen in the 
numerous broadsides relating to monstrous children born 
which were invariably regarded in the light of warnings 
to England. 

In Italy a Leonardo da Vinci showed his contempt for 
alchemists and necromancers. But no such thing as uni- 
formity of opinion can be found unless it is that the ma- 
jority remained credulous. The existence of superstition 
was only one of those irrational elements which serve as 
correctives to more buoyant hopes in the wish to reform 
humanity. 

The tragic effects due to the belief in sorcery were, oddly 
enough, coincident with the Renaissance but reached a 
terrible climax in the Seventeenth Century. The worst 
excesses against witches were committed during the Com- 
monwealth, as the result of Puritanical teaching in caus- 
ing men everywhere to see Satanic influence. Yet the 
feeling of rationalism existed as well. Reginald Scott 
published in 1584, his remarkable "Discovery of Witch- 
craft," where he exposed the gross fallacy of the super- 
stition. Shakespeare, with probable personal indifference, 
makes Lafeu say in "Alls Well that Ends Well: " 

"We have our philosophical persons to make modern 
and familiar things supernatural and causeless." (II, III, 

I-3-) 

The awakened consciousness of man and the new op- 
portunities for diffusion, caused even the worst superstition 
to obtain an influence which could hardly have been ex- 
pressed in a grosser age. The half enlightenment which 
was widespread proved prejudicial to the growth of the 



PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN LIFE 285 

real spirit of the Renaissance. A nation's life is too varied 
to be centred within any exclusive direction. The awak- 
ening stimulated the growing consciousness of man to- 
ward prejudice quite as much as toward enlightenment. 
The wide prevalence of superstition and its terrible effects 
in the burning of witches, were the results of popular pres- 
sure and not of official direction. It needed the incre- 
dulity of the Restoration to shatter a belief which rested 
on such broad foundation. 



VIII. ENGLAND AND THE SEA 

The accident of Columbus's discovery no more detracts 
from its greatness than does the fact that it was less the 
Genoese sailor-adventurer who discovered the New World 
than his era. Certainly the same discovery made even a 
century earlier, would have hardly precipitated the re- 
sult as was proved by the Northmen. It required an age 
full of life and of bursting energy like the Renaissance to 
realize the vast importance of the adventure. In this 
sense, the discovery of the New World is as much a tri- 
umph of the Renaissance as is the discovery of Antiquity. 
The scholar in his study and the mariner on his deck were 
working toward a common goal, and both were pushing 
back the bounds which so long had hemmed in man- 
kind. For the first time since the decay of Rome, action 
and thought were united to bring about one vast result. 
Oddly enough, England lagged behind in this pursuit. 
By a curious circumstance, her backwardness with respect 
to the other countries of western Europe was nowhere 
more evident than in allowing these to cull the first fruits 
of their enterprise. So late as 1502, Henry VII could write 
to the Pope that English mariners were unaccustomed to 
sail beyond Pisa.^ So late as 1529, David Lyndsay, one 
of the most cultivated men of his day, could write — 

**The earth tripartite was In three; 
In Africa, Europe and Asle." ^ 

A voyage undertaken by Captain Bodenham to Chios in 
1 55 1, seemed of sufficient importance to warrant being 
included in Hakluyt's chronicle. The first English essays 
in navigation were strangely timid. Later de la Popeliniere 
expressed surprise that the English in spite of' their love 

286 



ENGLAND AND THE SEA 287 

of enterprise and their valour, should have failed to make 
themselves felt in an element which ought to be more 
natural to them than to other nations.^ 

Historians are prone to seek ancient pedigrees for 
newer births, in order to elevate these into primitive 
national traits. English history has favoured the belief 
that love of the sea has always been a deep-rooted in- 
stinct in the British race. The slightest familiarity with 
life in the Sixteenth Century convinces one that until the 
end of Elizabeth's reign English backwardness lagged 
behind every other country in western Europe, and was 
so great as to astonish foreign observers. 

Maritime enterprise could only develop when assisted 
by centralized resources such as the feudal structure of 
society never possessed. Hence the reason why the period 
of discovery in navigation coincided with the Renaissance, 
was not merely fortuitous, but rather the corollary of poli- 
tical evolution. Ideas born in Italy came to harvest in 
lands with better organized national resources. This, 
in turn, only became possible after such countries had 
achieved their national unity. Until this was accom- 
plished in Spain, France and England, it had been hope- 
less to expect states to divert their energy from more 
urgent needs toward distant and precarious enterprises. 
A coincidence of causes then shaped the conditions of 
discovery which allowed a Columbus, a Verazzano and a 
Cabot, to find their opportunity in lands other than their 
own. 

England was the last country to receive this impulse, 
which came as a novelty from abroad almost at the same 
time as the new learning, and as its complement in action. 
While circumstance, interest and ambition, later devel- 
oped aptitude for the sea among Englishmen, till with 
rapid forgetfulness of its true origin, they came to regard 
it as an inherited national trait, the first lesson came from 
Italy, the first example from Spain, and the first venture 
began with the consolidation of the Tudor state. 



288 TUDOR IDEALS 

Except for a few Bristol merchants with eyes fixed on 
the hope of gain, the crown was the only element in the 
nation with its survey beyond the seas discerning with 
wider vision the novel elements entering into the life of the 
age. The service it rendered in providing a threshold for 
new ideas in national life, cannot be overestimated. At 
a time of disentegration of old forces and swift evolution 
of new ones, the crown by its openness to other influences 
and its freedom from insular prejudices, civilized England 
at the same time as it saved it from the barbarism of a 
long period of anarchy. 

Henry VII, with his keen eye to the future, had fore- 
seen the possibilities of discovery and in spite of his prover- 
bial avarice proved almost generous in donations to ex- 
plorers. A contemporary Venetian was even amused by 
the honours paid John Cabot who dressed in silks, was de- 
scribed as enlisting as many English as he liked, with Ital- 
ian rogues besides. Yet this honour was richly deserved, 
for long afterward the mariners of Elizabeth traced to him 
the pedigree of their sea-faring adventures. Henry VII's 
caution had restrained him from unduly backing oversea 
enterprise. His son was the first to realize that the future 
of England lay on the waters, and his aim to create a navy 
ranks among the greatest achievements of his reign. With 
the entrance of England into continental politics, came the 
realization of her insular situation of which previously she 
had hardly been aware. Along with the growth of a new 
merchant class whose profit came from oversea trade, there 
arose an interest in maritime enterprise. Tudor legisla- 
tion, always direct and wishing to develop a race of sea- 
men, encouraged the fisheries by decreeing compulsory 
abstinence from meat on two days in the week. 

The growing consciousness of England as an insular 
and maritime power, was reinforced by practical consid- 
erations of trade and interest. Half instinctively, half 
as the result of success achieved, ideas shaped themselves 
to form traditions which have since become the fibre of 



ENGLAND AND THE SEA 289 

the race till Englishmen knew that their real protection 
was the sea.^ The extension taken by English sea power 
was, however, so gradual that it remained for long almost 
unnoticed on the Continent. Nowhere more than in the 
discovery of the world, can one discern the British trait of 
slowness in receiving ideas and of tenacity in working them 
out. But the reason why the English discovery lagged 
behind in an age of discovery is not hard to find. With 
few exceptions, and until a late date, their navigators were 
merchants like Robert Tonson and Jasper Campion, or 
seamen with the love of buccaneering adventure. Their 
virtues were manly but homely. They carried out their 
enterprise in a spirit of adventurous gain, not of conquest 
or of proselytism. They looked for trade, not gold mines. 

Less directly favoured by the State than Spanish or 
Portuguese, English navigators underwent their own evo- 
lution. Commerce continued as before to be their justi- 
fication and gradually attracted the best blood in the 
land. Yet the interest in oversea enterprise came to be 
something more than that of money making. 

It was owing to Mary's Spanish marriage that Eng- 
lishmen were allowed to go to New Spain. To Philip's 
desire to ingratiate himself with his English subjects was 
doubtless due the authorization granted Robert Tonson 
to travel in Mexico. The accounts brought back of fabu- 
lous wealth fired the English imagination in a way which 
was later to turn so disastrously against the Spaniards. 

The first vision of England as a great maritime power 
was under Elizabeth. Camden remarked that when in 
the early days of her reign Shan O'Neill came out of 
Ireland to perform his submission at court attended by a 
bodyguard of axe-bearing "gallow glasses," bareheaded 
and longhaired, with yellow tunics and shaggy mantles, 
people gazed at them with no less wonder " than nowadays 
they do them of China and America. "^ During the years 
of Elizabeth's long reign the English mind learned to 
travel. 



290 TUDOR IDEALS 

The queen encouraged the seafaring tendencies of the 
nation, and freely gave letters for English merchants 
to Eastern potentates, in Abyssinia, Persia, China and 
Japan. She fostered English trade and appointed consuls 
at Aleppo, Babylon, and Basra. The consciousness that 
the discoveries of the age made it utterly unlike the past 
then impressed itself on every Englishman. Spenser wrote 

"Daily now through hardy enterprise 
Many great regions are discovered 
Which to late age were never mentioned." 
(Prol to F. Q., II, Prol 2.) 

and bade his countrymen conquer the lands around the 
Amazon and the Orinoco.^ Shakespeare wrote of those 
who sent their sons "to discover islands far away"' 
and Churchyard extolled in bad verse the voyages of Eng- 
lish seamen. ^ 

Save in matters of religion or of national defence, it is 
hard to discern any broad popular movement in the Six- 
teenth Century. The greatness of English navigation was 
due to the fact that it became popular after the idea was 
understood, and while receiving encouragement from the 
government was also favored by the people. In 1566 
the articles of incorporation of the Merchant Adventurers 
were drawn up for the discovery of "lands, territories, 
isles, dominions and Seignories unknown. " ^ The support 
for such enterprise rested on popular roots. To find the 
North East passage a company of £6,000 was first created, 
and shares were taken of £25 each with the proceeds of 
which three ships were bought. ^° Sir Francis Walsingham 
who died a poor man subscribed for this along with several 
noblemen and London merchants.^^ Queen Elizabeth and 
some of the leading courtiers like Lord Pembroke took 
shares in Hawkins* buccaneering expeditions which were 
chiefly intended to capture and sell slaves, though Bur- 
leigh to his credit would have nothing to do with this. 



ENGLAND AND THE SEA 291 

The North East passage mostly excited the English- 
men's imagination. Sir Humphrey Gilbert could advocate 
it as " the only way for our princes to possess the wealth of 
all the East. " The spirit of adventure had been let loose 
and to garrison these new discovered posts many volun- 
teers came forward. The list of merchant adventurers 
who assisted Drake in his expedition against the Span- 
iard in 1587 shows where his main support came from. 
His partners were grocers, mercers, and haberdashers. 
All save Drake himself were tradespeople.^^ 

English leadership on sea became individualized in 
much the same way it had been on land. The discipline 
of the nation did not long survive the great test of the 
Armada, and with the passing of the national danger, the 
feeling of personality reasserted itself and something akin 
to the enterprises of a feudal baronage in France was now 
repeated in the adventures of English mariners. Such 
exploits served as a corrective to the stabilizing conserva- 
tive tendencies of the new propertied classes in England. 
The greatness of England was due, more than is commonly 
suspected, to the rough balance preserved between the 
revived class conservatism nursing tradition at home, and 
daring individualism finding its opportunity overseas. 

The search for wealth, the desire for adventure, patriot- 
ism, hatred of Spain, and a restless energy, all combined 
to bring about the assertion of this new spirit. It is easy 
to single out any one of these motives as dominating. 
Those who went in quest of seafaring adventure were 
swayed by one or all. Sidney's eagerness to embark for 
a voyage of discovery could not have been due solely to the 
pursuit of gold. A young country squire like Philip Gawdy 
wrote to his brother from aboard the Revenge shortly be- 
fore its last fight, that he liked the sea and the sea life and 
its company. The spirit of adventure had passed into 
the nation's blood, no longer confined to a few but stream- 
ing through every class. 

The sea was soon to find its intellectual defence. When 



292 TUDOR IDEALS 

Essex in a letter ^^ said to have been written by Bacon, ad- 
dressed the Council, on embarking for the expedition 
against Cadiz, in June, 1596, the argument he brought 
forward was that the queen would thereby become "Mis- 
tress of the Sea which is the greatness that the Queen of an 
island should most aspire unto. " England, he argued, was 
a small state not extraordinarily rich and defended only 
by itself. Its interest was to use the sea in order to strike 
down its enemies. The same idea of sea power is expressed 
by Bacon. Alluding to the vast growth of navigation, he 
says of England that she has become "the lady of the sea" 
and that "the commandment of the sea is an abridgment 
or a quintessence of an universal monarchy. "^^ When 
Drake, "noble pirate" though he was,^^ on his first sight 
of the Pacific prayed God "to give him life and leave to 
sail an English ship upon that sea" he showed a spirit far 
higher than the desire for loot, and his prayer is compar- 
able to the dying Petrarch clasping to his bosom a manu- 
script of Homer he could not read. British superiority was 
only then beginning to be recognized and the Dutchman, 
Van Linschoten, who had been in the Portuguese service, 
could write 

"They are victorious stout and valiant; and all their enter- 
prises do take so good effect that they are thereby become 
lords and masters of the sea." 

Rough sailors and merchants of elementary education 
discovered the world, but it will always be the greatness 
of a clergyman like Hakluyt to have been the first to real- 
ize where lay the destinies of England and the direction 
in which it was desirable to extend her interests. When in 
1580 Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman were sent to find 
the North East passage, Hakluyt drew up directions for 
them to note all the characteristics of the lands they saw 
and of the savages encountered, and observe everything. 
They were to take with them specimens of English com- 
modities with a view to trade, and large maps of England 



ENGLAND AND THE SEA 293 

and London, "to make show of your city and let the river 
be drawn full of ships of all sorts to make the more show 
of your great trade. "^^ Lest there be objection to traf- 
ficking with unbelievers he cited the example of King 
Solomon in antiquity and in recent times of French, Gen- 
oese, and Venetians, in their intercourse with the Grand 
Signior. 

Reading the accounts of voyages one is impressed by 
the numerous adventures of undistinguished people who 
came from the humbler walks of life. One Richard Has- 
leton, for instance, embarking on an English merchantman 
bound for Patras is captured by Turkish corsairs and 
taken to Algiers. Made to work as a galley slave for four 
years, he is shipwrecked on Spanish soil where he finds 
himself denounced as an English heretic by one of his 
companions and sent to the prison of the Inquisition at 
Majorca. He spits in the face of the inquisitor and is 
punished by solitary confinement in an underground cell. 
A year later he effects his escape after adventures worthy 
of a Casanova. He is recaptured and tortured on the rack. 
Once more he escapes, and after fresh adventures finds a 
small l?oat in which he sails to the Barbary Coast. There 
he is taken by the Moors, and the same attempt as had 
been made by the Inquisition to induce him to forsake 
his Protestant faith is now made for him to turn Moslem. 
He seeks to escape, is recaptured, tries again more suc- 
cessfully and at last, after incredible dangers, is freed by 
the assistance of the great London merchant Richard 
Staper.^^ 

It is difficult to single out adventures where so many 
related by Hakluyt still preserve their interest. Thus a 
certain Miles Phillips took a minor part in Hawkins' ill- 
starred expedition in 1568. After firing a negro town on 
the Guinea Coast and kidnapping 500 negroes, they sailed 
with these to the Spanish Main. At San Juan de Ulloa, 
the Spanish fleet with the new Viceroy on board, came 
upon them unexpectedly. Hawkins who feared the 



294 TUDOR IDEALS 

queen's displeasure did not wish to fight and made an 
arrangement with the Spaniards which the latter treacher- 
ously violated, destroying the greater part of the English 
fleet. So much is history. Phillip's adventures begin 
shortly afterward. 

Hawkins, who had been left with only one vessel, was 
obliged by shortage of water and food to land some of 
his crew on the coast of Mexico. Phillips was among 
these and after many narrow escapes from drowning and 
hunger, being almost killed by the Indians, reached Tam- 
pico in an exhausted condition, where he and his com- 
panions were held as prisoners by the Spaniards. The 
governor threatens to hang them all but sends them 
instead to the City of Mexico, to be distributed as slaves. 

There he meets with fresh dangers at the hands of the 
Inquisition. In spite of the orthodox answers which he 
gave with remarkable presence of mind, they scent heresy 
in an Englishman and condemn him to serve in a monas- 
tery, wearing the San Benito, while some of his less fortu- 
nate companions were burned at the stake. At the Mon- 
astery he is appointed an overseer of the Indian workmen 
who were building a church and learns their language per- 
fectly, which was later to be of great use to him. Others 
of his companions abandoning all hope of return, entered 
into the service of the Inquisition and married negro 
women or mestizos, but Phillips never gave up the idea 
of liberty though he had been warned by the Inquisi- 
tion that if he tried to escape he would be burned as a 
relapsed heretic. He described how many of the Span- 
iards, even among the friars, loathed the Inquisition but 
stood in awe of it. To divert suspicion he bound himself 
as an apprentice to a silk weaver. Learning of Drake 
sailing up the Pacific he accompanies a Spanish expedition 
against him, but arrives too late, Drake having already 
gone. He then plans to join the Spanish fleet at San Juan 
de Ulloa, passing himself off as a soldier. At Vera Cruz 
he is arrested by mistake but recognized when brought 



ENGLAND AND THE SEA 295 

before the judge, is ordered to be sent back to Mexico 
City. On the way there he escapes by fihng off his chains, 
and with the help of friendly Indians wanders across the 
mountains to Central America. There he finds a Spanish 
ship on which he succeeds in embarking, but is again rec- 
ognized and discovers that the Captain intends deliver- 
ing him to the Inquisition at Seville. Pretending to sus- 
pect nothing, as soon as he arrives he makes his escape, 
and hides for three months. After that he enlists as a sol- 
dier to go to Majorca where at last he finds an English 
vessel and returns after an absence of fifteen years. 

There are the adventures of Thomas Cavendish, a 
gentleman by birth, who having squandered his fortune 
turns pirate and with three ships of which the largest was 
of 140 tons and the smallest of 40, with a total crew of 
125, started in 1596 to sail around the globe plundering 
the Spaniards wherever he met them and burning their set- 
tlements along the Pacific. 

For the most part included in Hakluyt, are tales of sea- 
men and merchants, who tempted by the hope of gain and 
adventure, sailed to distant parts where though the Span- 
iards and Portuguese had preceded them, they brought 
a keener energy and one less crippled by official interfer- 
ence. Returning to England, they came back with reports 
of the riches to be won in distant regions. 

Narratives of this kind which occurred to men without 
other distinction, raised England from its past insularity 
to a point where it felt in touch with the rest of the world. 
When the dramatists placed the universe under contribu- 
tion a new generation of seamen had sailed in every ocean. 
The early narration of voyages will hardly stand com- 
parison with similar Italian accounts, many of which were 
then translated into English. ^^ Yet Giles Fletcher's "Rus- 
sian Commonwealth," modelled, perhaps, on the rela- 
tions of Venetian ambassadors, contains a remarkably 
interesting description of Russian government, institutions 
and customs, which revolted Fletcher. The book was 



296 TUDOR IDEALS 

suppressed at the instigation of the Company of Mer- 
chants trading with Muscovy, who feared its effects on 
their trade. A great soHcitude for this was already no- 
ticeable, and made a friendly observer like Languet 
dread lest England be led astray by the thirst for gold. 

A poet like Richard Barnfield in the preface to a not very 
inspired poem entitled "Lady Pecunia or the Praise of 
Money," remarks that "the bravest voyages in the world 
have been made for gold; for it men have ventured by sea 
to the furthest parts of the earth." The books on dis- 
covery were calculated to influence the natural love of 
adventure and the thirst for gain. English courage was 
exalted above that of other nations and the deficiencies 
in navigation which had hitherto caused their backward- 
ness, were corrected. ^^ 

The feeling of energy which we couple with the Eliz- 
abethan age arises from the exploits of its mariners. 
England's giant progress came through dissociating her- 
self from the tangle of Continental politics and venturing 
into distant enterprise where all the nation could find its 
share. Men looked back on the past with the conscious- 
ness of the strides taken. Laurence Kenys, Raleigh's 
pilot companion, wrote that it was natural for England 
in the days of Henry VII to look with suspicion on the 
tale of an adventurer like Columbus. But " the pleasure 
of that incredulity lieth even now heavy on our shoulders." 
The advance taken by Spaniards and Portuguese was the 
handicap which spurred the English on to great deeds 
and made him write that the chief reward of virtue lay 
in action. The valiant enterprise of the age would seem 
fabulous to future generations.^" 

In 1598 after war weariness had been felt in France and 
England, the question of peace with Spain was considered. 
In spite of the difficulties of continuing an offensive war in 
the Low Countries, and the small results to be expected 
from attacking the coasts of Spain, advantage was seen in 
prolonging war in America. If an army of 10,000 men 



ENGLAND AND THE SEA 297 

could be sent to colonize the Isthmus of Panama, not only 
would it stop all Spanish trade, but it would be welcome to 
the rest of Europe who wished for nothing more than " free 
traffic in America. "^^ The new British imperiaHsm with 
its view beyond the seas knew that this would mean the 
future prosperity of England. 

If the quest for gold had been its only desire, the age 
would never have contained such seeds of greatness. Ra- 
leigh seeking to retrieve his fallen fortunes in Guiana, 
went there with no sordid ideas and could write that it 
sorted ill with the offices of honour which he held "to 
run from cape to cape and from place to place" for pil- 
lage. Seeking arguments for colonizing Guiana he found 
them in the cruelty of the Spaniards toward the natives 
and his gentle feelings vented themselves in sympathy 
toward these. 

The desire for colonization was the new element to 
make for English greatness and rescue it from the sordid- 
ness of early piratical adventure. Sidney who had been 
most eager to accompany Drake and was only restrained 
by the queen's interdiction, had formed all his plans for an 
extended colonization in America when he left for his 
death at Zutphen. Among his reasons was the conviction 
that with the forthcoming union with Scotland, the na- 
tion would be too small for the population without the 
outlet of foreign enterprise.^^ He obtained a grant "to 
discover, search, find out, view and inhabit certain parts 
of America not yet discovered" and to acquire right over 
the smaller areas. Sir Walter Raleigh entertained the 
same idea of colonies as desirable places to settle the 
"needy people of our country," whose destitution would 
otherwise lead them to crime. ^^ Others like Sir George 
Peckham and Christopher Carhill believed that the col- 
onies offered the remedy for vagabondage. 

Captain John Smith in his expedition to Virginia, was 
both to preach and practice this new colonial ideal and 
could write in words of greater consequence than even he 



298 TUDOR IDEALS 

suspected. "What so truly suits with honour and hon- 
esty as the discovery of things unknown, creating towns, 
peopHng countries, informing the ignorant, reforming 
things unjust, teaching virtue, and to gain our mother 
country a kingdom to attend her, to find employment 
for those that are idle because they know not what to do." ^^ 
And Drayton's noble ode "To the Virginian Voyage" 
praises the 

"Heroic minds 

worthy your country's name 

That honour still pursue 

Whilst loitering hinds 

Lurk here at home with shame." 

In a speech delivered in Parliament on the Virginia 
plantation. Bacon foretold that sometimes a grain of mus- 
tard seed grows into a great tree, and spoke of the colo- 
nies as very necessary outlets to a populous nation and 
profitable if well handled. ^^ Hakluyt could write that if 
anyone thought that an era of universal peace would 
close this movement he would be much deceived. If the 
period of wars should come to an end there would be far 
less employment, and he urged the gentry of England to- 
ward Virginia rather than to the pursuit of "soft un- 
profitable pleasures." ^^ 

The settlement of Virginia begins modern American 
history, but it is also the great offshoot of the spirit of 
the Renaissance. There is a deeper connexion than is 
at first apparent, between the art of Michelangelo, the 
fervour of Luther, the poetry of Shakespeare, and the 
colonizing ventures of Englishmen in Virginia. 



IX. NATIONALISM 

Nowhere were the new ideals of the Renaissance more 
welcome than at the court of Henry VIII. Hardly any- 
where were they slower in percolating through the mass 
than among the English people. No one welcomed for- 
eigners more heartily than the king, nowhere were they 
more hated by the population. The upper classes aped 
foreign fashions to the point of absurdity. An instinc- 
tive nationalism was the gathering cry of the London 
crowd. Nowhere were the people rougher, nowhere were 
gentlemen more courteous. In such contradictions lies 
the difficulty of framing judgments which seek to pierce 
beyond broad generalization. 

The Renaissance originated fewer new forces than is 
often supposed. Most of those which came to the sur- 
face in the Sixteenth Century had long been known, but 
they had previously been spasmodic and remained with- 
out continuity, instinctive and often inarticulate. The 
sense of nationality had at times acted vigorously dur- 
ing the Middle Ages. But it required the Sixteenth Cen- 
tury to formulate its theory and discover for it a literary 
and scholarly expression. 

The new nationalism, by an odd paradox, was born of 
foreign origin. In part this was intellectual. When Eng- 
lishmen realized that everywhere on the Continent men 
were exalting their origins and magnifying their achieve- 
ments, when they understood the contempt of Italians 
and Spaniards for all that was not of their own race, 
they felt the time had come to be proud of British deeds. 
But in part it was also instinctive and economic prompted 
by the emigration of Flemings and the prominence of 
Italians in the commercial life of London. 

Hatred against the foreigner had existed in England 

299 



300 TUDOR IDEALS 

since the earliest times. ^ So long as Britain was poor 
of ideas, and backward in industry, an unorganized nation- 
alism could not' prevent foreign elements from entering 
into the land and creating their own centres of diffusion. 
But the gradual extension of these aroused an opposi- 
tion which became more articulate through familiarity- 
till its evolution led to something very different from 
the brutish force at its origin. 

Nationalism tends to keep down the saturation point 
in a copimunity and prevents the alteration of its charac- 
ter by any sudden infusion of extraneous elements. The 
effect of its action is conservative and critical. It is 
usually most conspicuous at two periods in a country's 
development. The first when still a somewhat primitive 
community, it feels resentful of novelty and of whatever 
is not fashioned in its image. The second, is when the 
point of saturation in a highly developed community 
threatens to be exceeded and thus automatically pro- 
vokes reaction. In both instances it is a popular force 
having its roots deep in the masses. 

With broader perspective, the Tudor crown welcomed 
foreigners in whom it detected a source of potential 
wealth and an element which so long as it had not. identi- 
fied itself with the country, could never become a source 
of danger to the throne. Royal protection was necessary 
to these. In 15 17, Dr. Beale preached before a popular 
audience in London that each nation had received its 
boundaries from God, that the land they stood on was a 
perpetual inheritance to Englishmen, and the increase of 
poverty was due to aliens. He caused a riot against the 
foreigners which Wolsey had to put down with ruthless 
severity. 

Hall relates in his " Chronicle," that the multitude of 
strangers was so great in London that poor English work- 
men could scarcely get a living.^ He attributed the feel- 
ing against them to foreign contempt for the English. 
The reason is fanciful and the real ground was one which 



NATIONALISM 301 

has existed in every age and in every land namely, the 
jealousy and hatred for any alien community whose in- 
fluence, though in the end beneficial to the nation, is out 
of proportion to their number, and whose singularity of 
language or of custom draws attention to their activity 
and success. 

The hatred was not peculiar to French, Italians or Flem- 
ings, it was against all foreigners. Their influx into 
England from the Low Countries, Northern Germany and 
France was far greater than is commonly suspected. In 
1540 it was said that one-third the population of London 
consisted of alien artisans who were mainly employed in 
the working of metals, weaving and tapestry.^ Wyatt's 
Rebellion was nominally undertaken to prevent England 
"from overrunning by foreigners."* 

The spirit of nationalism descending into the mob pro- 
duced violence. In higher circles it was at the root of 
great changes and of jealous watchfulness. In England, 
as in Northern Europe, the success of the Reformation 
had rested on nationalist grounds. The Pope's inter- 
ference as a foreigner, and the intervention of Italian 
ecclesiastics, had always been resented. The desire for 
a national church rested on real foundations. With the 
tide of nationaHsm running high, Roman domination 
could not have survived. Even English Catholics felt 
that some change was necessary and Starkey makes 
Cardinal Pole declare that just as the common law should 
no longer be written in French but in the common tongue, 
so all public and private prayers ought to be said in the 
vulgar tongue.^ 

In his " Device of Succession," Edward VI gave among 
the reasons for passing over his sisters, Mary and Eliza- 
beth, the likelihood of their marrying strangers born out of 
the realm, who would incline to their own laws and prac- 
tices instead of those in England. Mary married the 
King of Spain. Her subjects who did not object to her 
burning Protestants were outspoken against the marriage. 



302 TUDOR IDEALS 

solely on grounds of nationalism. It was stipulated that 
Philip as consort should enjoy no power in England with- 
out the Council's consent. His own bodyguard were to 
be kept on their ships and forbidden to land in order 
not to excite popular animosity against them. 

Later, in the negotiations connected with Elizabeth's 
proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou, the same de- 
mands were made. The latter while enjoying the title of 
king, was to have no part in the affairs of the realm. He 
was to appoint no foreigner to any English office, alter 
nothing in the law, and preserve all customs. Neither the 
queen nor her children were to be removed from the realm 
without her consent or that of the peers, while all strong- 
holds were to be guarded by native Englishmen.^ Fear 
of the unpopularity of any foreign marriage was among 
the reasons which dissuaded the queen from contracting 
it. Yet one anonymous writer of that age would have 
welcomed a foreign prince for "if he live and marry in 
England, both himself and his children will become Eng- 
lish in a little space, while as a foreigner he would never 
dare to perpetrate the crimes which native princes had 
committed."^ 

A strong national spirit bordering on intolerance pre- 
vailed in England. Even Fynes Moryson, always ready 
to eulogize his countrymen, admits they had a spleen 
against strangers for growing rich among them.^ An 
Anti-Alien Bill was introduced in 1593, against which Sir 
Robert Cecil argued with great eloquence in favour of a 
more liberal spirit toward foreigners, maintaining that 
England's giving shelter to the oppressed had brought 
great honour to the realm.^ Others who shared these 
views pointed out that the prosperity of Antwerp and 
Venice came from the liberal facilities given to foreign 
traders. Few were able to rise high enough above preju- 
dice, to discover the slower processes of silent assimila- 
tion which made Englishmen out of the descendants of 
foreigners. 



NATIONALISM 303 

British nationalism, which resented the suggestion of 
foreign influence in England, saw no contradiction in 
imposing itself on Ireland. The policy of English rule 
since the earliest days had been to Anglicize the land, by 
forbidding the use of the Irish language, the Irish dress 
and even the Irish practice of riding without saddles. At 
the Irish Parliament in 1498 it was enacted that English 
dress and arms should be worn and the upper classes 
should ride "in a saddle after the English fashion." The 
dwellers within the Pale were compelled to adopt English 
manners, and attempts were made to separate them from 
the uncivilized parts of Ireland.^" Heny VIII gave Eng- 
lish titles and names to Irish lords and tried to educate 
their sons at his court. MacGilliphraddin became Fitz- 
Patrick, and Morrough O'Brien and Ulich Bourke, Earls 
of Thomond and Clanrickard. 

Instead of the Irish becoming English it was the reverse. 
The futility of supposed blood ties in nationality was soon 
to be shown by Ireland where the leaders of the revolt 
were mostly of English descent whose ties with the land 
proved far more binding than the old blood connexion. 
The denationalization of the English in Ireland became a 
source of amazement. Spenser remarked that their de- 
scendants had completely identified themselves with the 
land and were more hostile to the English than the Irish 
themselves." The Veres became the MacSweeneys. Eng- 
lish families "degenerating into this barbarism have 
changed their names after the Irish tongue," ^^ and were 
ashamed to have had any community with British fore- 
bears. Nothing surprised the English so much as to find 
educated men among the "wild Irish," some of them good 
Latinists; the rebel O'Rourke had been an Oxford student. 
They felt amazed that an English education did not 
always imply English sympathy. 

The most 'idealist of poets advocated the stern suppres- 
sion of Irish nationality. So liberal a writer as Richard 
Becon ^^ who preaches the good will and consent of the 



304 TUDOR IDEALS 

people, yet urged the repression of Irish national manifes- 
tations. The Age had not advanced to any tolerance for 
other nationalities where these were inferior in the scale 
of civilization. Sympathy toward an alien culture was 
unknown. 

Oddly enough the feeling of conscious nationalism in 
language was first heard most eloquently in Scotland. 
Gawain Douglas prided himself on his literary produc- 
tions in "Scottish," and made frequent references to "our 
Scottish tongue." In the rhymed preface to his transla- 
tion of Virgil, he tried to write in his own language which 
he had learned to speak as a page, and to use as few Eng- 
lish words as possible. Sir David Lyndsay defended his 
own desire to write in the common tongue. Lowland Scot- 
land bordered by the Gaelic Highlands and the Tweed, 
found a patriotic argument in its language. James VI 
took pride that his treatise in verse was the only one of 
its kind in the Scottish tongue which differs from the 
English "in sundry rules of poesy." 

In England literary consciousness appeared in the de- 
sire to purge the language of its borrowings. William 
Thynne republished Chaucer calling him the poet who, 
in spite of his age of ignorance, had been the first to rescue 
English from its barbarous uses. He referred to the im- 
provement in modern continental tongues and to the corre- 
sponding movement in England toward the "beautifying 
and bettering" of the language. So great a classical 
scholar as Sir Thomas Cheke realized the importance of 
striving toward a purer English, "unsullied and unman- 
gled with borrowings of other tongues. " ^^ 

The consciousness of literary nationality was everywhere 
increasing. By intelligent application of the spirit of 
antiquity the seed of modernity was sown. Where Chau- 
cer and Lydgate had apologized for writing in the vulgar 
tongue, Ascham, dedicating his " Toxophilus " to the king, 
remarked that though he might have written it in Latin, 
or Greek, yet he preferred to do so "in the English tongue 



NATIONALISM 305 

for Englishmen," anticipating blame for this because it 
had hitherto only been used in writing by the ignorant. 

Ascham who was a literary nationalist deprecated mix- 
ing languages and reproved the introduction of foreign 
words. ^^ With the same idea, the author of the famous 
preface to the "Shepheard's Calendar" singled out Spenser 
for having laboured to restore forgotten English words 
to their proper vintage, instead of patching up the lan- 
guage with pieces and rags borrowed from French and 
Italian. A new feeling of the literary excellence of Eng- 
lish had arisen. The poet Gascoigne was to urge the 
use of monosyllables to seem the truer Englishman, and 
smell the less of the inkhorn.^^ 

Where Bembo had praised the Tuscan, Du Bellay the 
French, and the Spaniard, Vives could write in Latin to 
advocate the use of the vernacular, a schoolmaster like Pal- 
grave dedicating his rendering oi Acolastus to Henry VIII, 
laid stress on the importance of proper instruction being 
given in both Latin and English and noted with pride 
that the English language had then reached its "highest 
perfection. " 

The scholarly pride of the poet formed part of the new 
consciousness of life discovered by the Italians who like 
the Greeks regarded "all other nations to be barbarous 
and unlettered." ^^ Gabriel Harvey wrote that Italy, 
France and Spain had wilfully set out to advance their 
tongues above Greek and Latin and rightly esteemed 
their own national poets, whereas in England everything 
English was disparaged. ^^ Classicist though he was, he 
hoped that England also would assert itself and cease to 
care for what was done in "ruinous Athens or. decayed 
Rome." His exaggerations were not without their grain 
of truth. National political unity had run ahead of cul- 
tural development. English scholars were now anxious 
to prove that England, far from being a "barbarous 
nation," was also a mother of letters. 

Such forms of nationalism, breathing satisfaction for 



3o6 TUDOR IDEALS 

whatever came from the soil, were healthy and useful when 
not exaggerated, for at times they led to an undue ex- 
uberance of vanity. John Coke in the "Debate between 
the Heralds of England and France" of 1550, discovered 
ground for British superiority since the day when Bru- 
tus brought four Athenian philosophers to the University 
he had founded at Stanford. ^^ That extravagances should 
be committed in the name of nationalism was natural. 
The fact that English learning was lacking in the com- 
manding personality of the greater continental contempo- 
raries caused eagerness to hide such shortcomings. John 
Bale wrote patriotic effusions over obscure scholars. Har- 
rison asserted that the English clergy were everywhere 
reputed to be the most learned. ^° Francis Mere's praise 
of Shakespeare has survived, but his enthusiasm for 
every form of English culture becomes grotesque when 
Thomas Atchelow and Matthew Royden are cited to 
prove the superiority of British bards. 

Carew claims preeminence for English over all other 
tongues because it had borrowed from them all.^^ W. C. 
in "Polimanteia" asserted the superiority of the new 
English poetry over its French and Italian predecessors. 
Let Tasso and Ariosto, du Bellay and Ronsard, admit that 
in Spenser and Daniel they had found their masters. ^^ 
Thomas Nash expresses readiness to back Spenser against 
all the world. ^^ 

The Italian, Polydore Virgil, the first to approach Eng- 
lish history in a critical spirit, brought on himself a storm 
of censure indignant at his disproof of early legends. The 
reflective attitude of man expressed through scholarship 
required a certain maturity of mind to ripen. The grow- 
ing feeling of nationalism which was to be the political 
accompaniment of this self-consciousness was, however, 
responsible for the first study in England of British antiq- 
uities and of whatever might contribute to exalt the na- 
tional origins. 

Scholarship assumed a patriotic colour. The pride of 



NATIONALISM 307 

achievement and the wish to rival the past were attached 
to this feehng. On the Continent learned men like Orosius 
wilfully distorted the truth; others like Gaguin extolled 
the deeds of their nation at the expense of others.^'' 
English scholars partly in emulation, or because they felt 
the same currents, magnified Britain and whatever per- 
tained to their native land. 

The new spirit of literary nationalism was not peculiar 
to any one country. Hubert Languet relates how German 
scholars claimed Teutonic origins for most of Northern 
France and could smile at the " Cambro-Briton," Hum- 
phrey Lluyd, furious to be called an Englishman. ^^ Such 
excess of nationalism was only the counterpart of the 
political imperialism of the age which veered around till 
it assumed a religious form. It was the instinctive re- 
action against the internationalism of the early learning. 
The humanists had felt at home in every centre of letters, 
and remained without patriotism in their attachment to 
the ancient literature, but the new generation by a na- 
tural reaction applied scholarly methods derived from 
antiquity to their own national culture. 

For the first time all forms of English life aroused in- 
terest. William Thynne passed his life in collecting, edit- 
ing and publishing the manuscripts of Chaucer. His son 
Francis to give proof of a critical discernment not often 
associated with the age, entered into a minute examina- 
tion of philological questions in his criticism of Speaight's 
edition of the poet. The early origins of the English 
language were studied.^^ In 1574 the History of Alfred 
was printed in Anglo-Saxon characters with an interlinear 
English translation. 

With men like Camden, Spelman, Stow, Norden and 
Caius, a novel curiosity was taken in the antiquities of 
England, national and local. Although the interest in 
ruins was never so great in England as on the Continent, 
English scholars were alive to the importance of those dis- 
covered on their own soil. Holinshed described minutely 



3o8 TUDOR IDEALS 

the remains at Bath and made conjectures about various 
pieces of Roman statuary. He devoted a chapter to the 
antiquities found in England, especially cairns, and the 
Roman remains still in existence near Chesterford and 
Burton as well as the mosaic pavements at Ancaster. 
Harrison, who collected ancient coins, comments on the 
antiquities continually being discovered near localities 
where Roman legions had wintered. 

London never exercised such appeal to the English 
imagination as Rome did to the Italian, but it, also, be- 
came a source of pride. Stow, who begins his survey of 
London by dwelling on the Roman writers who had glori- 
fied their city, found everywhere interest in the buildings, 
monuments and foundations of his native city. Such 
books as Harrison's "Description of England" and Sir 
Thomas Smith's "Commonwealth of England" show the 
new curiosity of man in his surroundings. Where Smith 
analyzes the machinery of government, Harrison describes 
the lives and customs of the people. Each aimed to leave 
a permanent record of events, and Smith in his final words 
declares his intention not to draw the description of an 
ideal commonwealth but of England as it "standeth and 
is governed at this day, the 28th of March 1565." His 
new comparative method brings out the elements of 
diflference between England and the continental states 
where Roman civil law was used. Harrison aims to give 
a truthful account of his age, with its social forces and 
the spirit of its life. His claim to be the first who has 
described "this isle of Britain" is not strictly true, but he 
was first to enter into his task from the modern point of 
view of interest in the life about him. 

Such books, written often in a spirit of national self- 
praise, were less modelled on the works of antiquity than 
on continental prototypes. Everywhere the fresh sap of the 
Renaissance was producing its lesser shoots in books ren- 
dered original by their specious purpose, and whose inter- 
est springs as much from uncritical criticism as from the 



NATIONALISM 309 

merits of their scholarship. They pertain to the age far 
more by their purpose than by the ponderous quality of 
their learning. The activities of the century were not iso- 
lated and detached, but closely associated. The interest 
presented by learning lay in it having left the seclusion 
of monasteries and colleges to enter life. The Academies 
which then began to be formed like the "Society of Anti- 
quaries, " provided the first meeting ground where those 
occupied in affairs like Archbishop Parker held inter- 
course with such scholars as Cotton, Selden and Speed. 
A cultivated society came out of this headed by men like 
Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley, to provide new 
contact between life and learning. 



X. INTERNATIONALISM 

The Church alone during the Middle Ages reminded men 
of their brotherhood. It must always be the boast of 
Rome to have upheld a universal ideal inherited from an- 
tiquity, which came near to preserving the civilized world 
within its fold. The spirit of the Renaissance swept over 
Europe at a time when this feeling was in decay, receding 
before the rise of a national consciousness which forced 
even the vicar of Christ to become an Italian prince. In- 
ternationalism derived from a Universal Church, took 
a secular form in letters. The common origin of classical 
culture provided the new bond of union between nations. 

The political justification of internationalism lies in 
economy of effort. Alien rule seems less alien where local 
laws and customs remain unchanged. Rome of the Em- 
perors understood this and its imperialism became by 
policy tolerant and cosmopolitan. Henry VIII's conti- 
nental ambition made him welcome foreigners and ad- 
vance his claim for election as Emperor, on the ground 
that he "is of the Germany tongue."^ The age found 
little interest in theoretical foundations of race, yet its 
rulers groped toward a new imperialism in the same way 
as the masses groped toward nationalism. Henry VIII 
could give the name of "Emperor" to one of his new 
ships. Later Somerset's plan of union between England 
and Scotland, proposed that the names of the two coun- 
tries be abandoned, that the United Kingdom be called 
the Empire, and its Sovereign "Emperor of Great 
Britain." 2 

Imperialism is always the result of a superabundance 
of energy fretting within its own walls. The mistake lies 
in regarding it as a purely political phenomenon attached 

310 



INTERNATIONALISM 3 1 1 

to the idea of sovereignty, instead of recognizing its in- 
tellectual and economic aspects. It has been unduly nar- 
rowed instead of widened. In this sense, the absorption 
of new elements from abroad was to be a necessary step 
before England could hope to attain her higher destiny. 
Foreign ideas, whether coming from scholars, or naviga- 
tors, the growth of foreign intercourse, the desire for for- 
eign luxuries, were as many spurs with which to prick into 
action the dormant energy of a proud and gifted race. 
They were the ferment needed to leaven the English 
people. England became a great nation only after her 
outlook had become internationalized through contact 
with the great forces of the world and she had acquired 
consciousness of her opportunity toward these. 

This came about through several different ways. After 
their long isolation. Englishmen felt the magnet which 
drew them outside their own island. New relations fol- 
lowed the usual course which developed from ignorance 
and hostility, to imitation, and from imitation to orig- 
inality. Such evolution embraced the history of the 
century during which time alien ingredients became grad- 
ually absorbed into British life where they acted as civil- 
izing processes. Foreign elements only enter the life 
of a nation when they are able to offer some kind of 
superiority. 

The English became an imperial race, not because of 
the square miles of territory they sought to colonize, but 
because their permanent vision went beyond the sea and 
because the courage and fortitude necessary to achieve 
great results ran in their blood. The growing call for 
high adventure and reward was the reason which then 
made England a great power. 

Alien ingredients only seem dangerous to the man who 
stays at home, and rightly so, for he has nothing satisfac- 
tory to oppose to them. The sailor who realized that he 
was carrying with him a little of British soil, did not feel 
this risk. The man who fought the Spaniards could copy 



312 TUDOR IDEALS 

Spanish fashions in his dress and use Spanish oaths in his 
talk, without feehng that he was one whit less an English- 
man. Hence, by an odd paradox, the real promoters of 
English greatness were those who were ready to drink 
from foreign sources and found nothing amiss in introduc- 
ing foreign elements into their parlance. It may seem 
farfetched to find connexion between the early humanists 
and those who sailed the Spanish Main. Yet scholars 
first brought this wider outlook into England, and the 
ideas born from classical texts were gradually to extend 
until they sent Drake to sack the Spanish galleons. 

The early cosmopolitanism which made Colet and More 
believe in the brotherhood of man was religious and intel- 
lectual. When the rift of creed split Europe in two, the 
fragments of the more civilizing aspects of internationalism 
were preserved by a universal scholarship. During the 
Middle Ages men had wandered freely from one univer- 
sity to another. Something of this spirit was preserved, 
for it was the practice of the crown in England to send 
promising scholars abroad for study. ^ The novelty of 
the lesson which Italy alone had once been able to teach 
was no more so great. Much of the difference in intellec- 
tual level between England and the Continent had been 
bridged over, while a new political bias due to religious 
grounds made men either violent partisans or else left 
them indifferent. 

A few scholars could still correspond. Bude exchanged 
letters with Cuthbert Tunstall and Richard Pace, Ascham 
with Peter Ramus, Camden with a number of French men 
of letters. But toward the end of the century even this 
intercourse had diminished in spite of the foreign schol- 
ars and religious refugees who visited England. Bacon 
lamented the fact that not more international ties bound 
together the universities and preached fraternity in 
learning, but the unity of Europe had been shattered. 
Such cosmopolitanism as now existed was that of the in- 
dividual and except for the Catholic priesthood not of a 



INTERNATIONALISM 3 13 

class. Humanism in its early sense was dead, but its seeds 
had ripened into a new feeling of the inherent community 
of mankind. Shylock's speech to Salario pleads the 
brotherhood of man. Samuel Daniel could write that the 

"happy pen 

Should not be vassaled to one monarchy 
But dwell with all the better world of men 
Whose spirits all are of one community." ^ 

Expatriation was not infrequent. During the Catho- 
lic Reaction, the Society of Jesus did much to create new 
international bonds which stretched across frontiers. Rob- 
ert Parsons and his band of English Jesuits, unlike most 
English Catholics, were British only in name. 

Some English renegades became Moslems and in the 
fight between the Dolphin of London and five Turkish 
ships, three of these, according to a contemporary ac- 
count, were captained by Englishmen.^ The Dey of Al- 
giers had appointed a renegade Englishman as his treas- 
urer.^ Strangest of all were the adventures of William 
Adams who made Japan his home, married a Japanese 
wife and built the first Japanese navy. 

Scholarly internationalism was dead, but popular in- 
ternationalism brought cultivation to the masses. Like 
the overflow of a reservoir new ideas then poured into 
England. Innumerable translations from foreign tongues 
gave a smattering of culture to those who had before been 
without it. 

So late as the Fifteenth Century the English tongue 
had not altogether established itself in higher circles. 
Several of the earlier letters in the Paston correspondence 
are in French. The long connexion with France had not 
yet severed all the links which made for a distinct na- 
tionality. The practice was frequent for Englishmen of 
family to be sent to Paris to complete their education. 
Erasmus' first connexion with England came about in 
this way. Anne Boleyn, had been brought up at the 



314 TUDOR IDEALS 

French court from which she returned with the poet 
Nicholas Bourbon in her train. Henry VIII's love letters 
to her were nearly all in a French which shows thorough 
familiarity with the tongue. Later in the century, James 
VI, writing to Elizabeth on more than one occasion, ex- 
pressed himself in French. 

French influence was powerful in Scotland. France was 
full of Scotchmen, from the archers of the king to the 
poor students of the college who went there to find for- 
tune, and even in compliment James VI could say to 
La Mothe Fenelon, the French Ambassador, that, though 
he had two eyes, two ears and two hands, he had but 
one heart and that was French. 

An interchange between the two lands was continuous. 
French tutors were found in many great houses.^ French 
humanists like Loys le Roy and Henry Estienne and 
poets like Ronsard and Monchrestien, came to England. 
French Huguenot tracts were translated into English. 
French phrase books were frequent,^ and one of the first 
was printed by Wynkyn de Worde about the year 1500. 
The fact that this contains rules for table manners and let- 
ters which a prentice was supposed to write to his master to 
announce the arrival of ships at Southampton, indicates 
that it was intended for wider diffusion than in the circle 
of the court. 

It is commonly supposed that English was still ignored 
in France in the Sixteenth Century, yet Sir David Lynd- 
say's Poems were printed in English in Paris in 1558 ^ 
and English poems were also printed in Paris. ^° English- 
men like John Eliot wrote in French, and Gascoigne com- 
posed his "Hermit's Tale" in French as well as in English. 

The anonymous T. B. C. translating La Primaudaye's 
"French Academic" in 1586, speaks of retaining many of 
the author's words which "will be found harsh at the 
first," but in a short time will be read as smooth as other 
Greek or Latin words which are now taken for mere Eng- 
lish. The use of these " tendeth to the enriching of our 



INTERNATIONALISM 315 

own language. " The vocabulary was added to in this way- 
much to the disgust of purists. 

The fashion for everything foreign had swept over Eng- 
land. The young gallant enters Paul's churchyard to 
buy Ronsard, Aretine and the Spanish writers with which 
to sharpen his wits. Foreign fashions excited disparage- 
ment of the native product. Nash wrote "Tut says our 
English Italian the finest wits our climate sends forth are 
but dry brained dolts in comparison of other countries. "^^ 
Puritans and nationalists were alarmed by such tend- 
encies which were thought to encourage Romanism. By 
a curious but frequent paradox foreign influences aroused 
English nationalism. The new literary nationalism at- 
tacked the very elements it copied. 

A chorus of writers united to deplore this love of for- 
eign fashions among the English. ^^ Long before Nash 
and Greene, Laurence Humphrey complained of his coun- 
trymen being "delighted rather with foreign wits and 
traffic than their own countries." Only what came from 
abroad, whether in language, apparel or behaviour, was 
prized. ^^ Even Lyly felt it necessary to warn his read* 
ers against the danger of foreign travel. ^^ 



XL CLASSICISM AND THE UNIVERSITIES 

In the preface to his edition of Cato, Caxton singled out 
for praise the example of the Romans, who out of de- 
votion to their city sacrificed property and life. An- 
tique virtue was always before the eyes of the men of 
the Renaissance. It provided them with a conception 
of life enlarged beyond the castle, guild and monastery. 
In this sense, the lesson of the classics though not inten- 
tionally democratic, tended toward the idea of man's 
place in the state outside the narrow groove in which the 
Middle Ages had set him. The Renaissance spirit wel- 
comed at court because of extolling the power of the 
prince, came as a revelation to those below, to whom it 
represented a far wider horizon. Almost unconsciously 
it evolved the idea of the modern state where social dif- 
ferences depend no longer on legal restrictions. Men dis- 
covered that in an age which they recognized was further 
advanced than their own, humanity had made easier the 
liberation of individual energy and talent. The lesson 
of the classics greater than that conveyed by its texts, 
pointed to the discovery of a new conception of life. 

Humanism was never the revelation to England that 
it had been to Italy where for a century it arrested the 
promise of its original genius. South of the Alps, it had 
grown as a plant of native growth flourishing on its own 
soil. The many-headed Italian structure was as favour- 
able to a learning which could not exist without patron- 
age, as it was unfavourable to national unity. In England, 
where humanism was imported, the normal centres of 
attraction were confined to the court and two universi- 
ties. Much of its original force was gone before it had 
crossed the channel, and it had already become the shadow 

316 



CLASSICISM AND THE UNIVERSITIES 317 

of a shadow. It was welcomed and protected, but in its 
original form it never shot out strong roots on British soil. 
A few classical scholars whose names are almost forgotten 
and would elsewhere have passed almost unnoticed, adorn 
the scholarly annals of the age. But for several reasons, 
its immediate influence was narrow and its direct effects 
restricted. The most valuable results were to be indirect 
and remote. The real revelation of the Ancient World 
was later felt by those who, unable to construe a simple 
Latin sentence, yet saw before them the living figures of 
antiquity. 

The intellectual barrenness of the Fifteenth Century 
in England was so immense as to make peculiarly welcome 
any glimmer of a new culture. The chronicle of a move- 
ment inevitably lifts its sponsors out of their true per- 
spective. Patrons of letters like Duke Humphrey of 
Gloucester, or Tiptoft, had undoubted appreciation of 
the new ideas then stirring Italy. But as forerunners of 
the Renaissance in England their importance hardly ex- 
tended beyond their persons, and save for the donation 
of a few volumes, remained without known influence. 
The isolated example of scholars and patrons, picked out 
from among the annals of the age, show only that a cer- 
tain scholarly tradition, hanging on a thin spun thread, 
had survived from earlier times. The knowledge of Greek 
was probably never entirely lost in England, but the 
atmosphere of learning had become rarefied. Even the 
first band of Oxford scholars who went to Italy, suggest 
little more than the recognition of new opportunities for 
cultivation existing beyond the Alps. 

A few English churchmen took interest in learning. Here 
and there, a few Italian prelates or travellers find recep- 
tiveness for their ideas. The search for such examples 
thin-spread through the disordered annals of the age, 
offers the most convincing proof of how slightly their im- 
portance touched the national life. The return of Grocyn 
and Linacre from Italy has usually been taken as the 



3i8 TUDOR IDEALS 

date for the introduction of the new learning into England, 
but even this suggests misleading inferences, if an orderly 
and progressive development of scholarship is meant 
thereby. The reactions of English learning to the Renais- 
sance are ill defined so soon as one seeks to pierce beyond 
the more obvious facts. No such printers graced the 
annals of the English press as the Aldines in Italy or the 
Estiennes in France. Wynkyn de Worde and Reginald 
Wolfe were Alsatians. Richard Pynson a Frenchman. 
The printer of Elizabethan times was a jobber. John 
Rastell, who was a lawyer, is almost the only example of 
the cultivated man able to appreciate the bond between 
letters and the printing press. 

Learning failed in early attempts to attain the same 
dignity in England as it had achieved on the Continent. 
And the fault lies not a httle with the lack of commanding 
personalities. Its atmosphere especially during the early 
years of the Sixteenth Century was limited. One points 
to shining lights and quotes Erasmus' fulsome praise. 
Erasmus then looking for patronage had been well re- 
ceived in England and took pride in his discovery of British 
scholars, but even he limits the number of the erudite 
in London to five or six. English scholars, less gifted than 
the Italian, attracted him by fewer pretensions and greater 
purity of life. The monastic tradition still stamped an 
ascetic touch which nearer familiarity with Rome effaced 
in Italy. But learning never reached out to the same 
full growth. Wolsey himself in spite of his munificent 
scholastic foundations took little real interest in the re- 
vival of letters. 

Scholarship remained stunted. Leland the antiquary 
has described this indifference. In London he had been 
able to discover only one collection of books and calls 
shame on "so noble a city to have but one library and 
that to be so slender. " ^ At Norwich he had found 
all the books from the monasteries turned over to the use 
of grocers and candlemakers. His Protestantism made him 



CLASSICISM AND THE UNIVERSITIES 319 

approve of the dissolution of the monasteries, but he re- 
gretted the blow dealt to letters. "Why ought not their 
libraries as well have remained to the commonwealth of 
learning undestroyed?" He denounced as a national dis- 
grace that so many ancient chronicles and histories 
should have been destroyed. In so doing "we have both 
"greatly dishonoured our nation and also showed ourselves 
very wicked to our posterity." 

A new doctrine had, however, been brought over and 
its seeds scattered. Some of these never ripened at all 
or wilted when separated from Continental inspiration. 
Some gave great promise which later was little fulfilled. 
Others changed their nature and developed into some- 
thing different and far more important. Except for a 
narrow group the new culture was tardy in establishing 
itself on British soil. A few examples can always be ral- 
lied to prove the contrary. But the broad result was 
disappointing though not unexpected. The normal chan- 
nel for the diffusion of new ideas was clogged from the 
start. 

The intellectual triumph of medieval institutions had 
been the University. It was the product of monasticism 
applied to letters, and its conservative spirit due to early 
traditions continued to be powerful, and made the nat- 
ural centres of learning far from responsive to the new 
ideas. The scholarly awakening of medieval Oxford de- 
cayed with the suppression of Wycliffism. When dry 
rot seizes hold of an academic institution none can be 
so refractory to novelty, and humanism even with the 
consecration of exalted patronage, was far from welcome 
in the supposed homes of learning. It had to contend 
there against the weight of an ancient established tradi- 
tion and a force of inertia whose only energy was roused 
by resistance. Such early struggles, centring around the 
contest between so-called Grecians and Trojans, ended 
supposedly in the triumph of the former. The new move- 
ment, powerfully supported by the crown, could not lightly 



320 TUDOR IDEALS 

be brushed aside. But its victory was not conclusive 
and its growth remained retarded and hemmed in. 

The early luminaries of the new learning in England 
were scholars concerned with the subject of their studies 
more than with the direction of institutions. Though 
some of them afterward lectured at Oxford they hardly 
attained academic prominence, and the main interest of 
their lives is to be found elsewhere. Success was incom- 
plete and precarious, and preserved only a narrow foot- 
hold. Erasmus' flattering comment on British scholar- 
ship and his enthusiastic account of a banquet at Oxford 
are one side of the picture. Even the existence of a 
Tunstall and a Lilly did not mean that the new culture 
rested on any broad foundation or met with any deep 
interest or support. 

The University could begrudge its welcome to human- 
ism the more easily, because the latter was neither aca- 
demic in its origins nor in its early associations, while 
those of its sons who felt the call of the new learning did 
not return to the fold. Even in Italy, the humanists had 
been mostly individual scholars whose learning came from 
self-study or from some one master and was not the prod- 
uct of an institution. In the end it was inevitable that 
the erudite should drift toward the anchorage of the 
University to seek there academic shelter. But the orig- 
inal welcome had been cold for many reasons, and not 
least because of the atmosphere of conservatism imposed 
by an earlier tradition. Many of the best scholars of the 
time never went to the University. Later Scaliger re- 
mained outside academic life until called to Leyden in 
his old age. 

The real spirit of both Oxford and Cambridge was in- 
herited from the Middle Ages. Hence under Mary, even 
the utility of Greek was once more doubted and the ef- 
fort made to bring back scholasticism and let "Duns with 
all the rabble of barbarous questionists" ^ dispossess 
Plato and Cicero. Till very much later the old inherited 



CLASSICISM AND THE UNIVERSITIES 321 

"quadrivials" were still studied though "now smally 
regarded."^ The path to academic success lay through 
routine pursuits and orthodox conservatism. 

The glov/ing picture drawn by Ascham of the state of 
Hellenic studies at Cambridge in 1542, is the best testi- 
mony of how tardy and restricted had been the spread of 
the new learning. Classical studies were slow to make 
their way and their penetration in the end was at no 
little sacrifice. When the Universities found these could 
no longer be kept from their doors, instinctively they 
devitalized their spirit. Instead of the Ancients being the 
living inspiration they had proved to Erasmus and to 
More, the classical tongues came to be regarded primarily 
as suitable instruments for study. The writing of Latin 
and Greek became goals for academic ingenuity and the 
classical revelation, instead of spurring men on to fresh 
enquiry, was distorted into making unwilling school- 
boys compose bad Latin verses. 

No great mind nor directing force lived to make the 
University realize the place it might have filled in na- 
tional life. Linacre found his field of interest in medi- 
cine, Tunstall, Sir Thomas Smith, Roger Ascham and 
Thomas Wilson, in the service of the state. Men of real 
scholarly attainments sought occupation outside the Uni- 
versity. 

Both Cambridge and Oxford suffered during the Six- 
teenth Century. In a sermon preached in 1550, Lever 
alludes to their decay, to the dwindling number of scholars, 
as well as to their wretched condition.^ Latimer attrib- 
uted this to the impoverishment of the yeomen class no 
longer prosperous enough to give their sons a good edu- 
cation.^ The troubled progress of the Reformation had 
as much to do with this, for the colleges, unable to secu- 
larize themselves were affected by the frequent changes. 
Where there was no fixed goal nor high purpose, the drift 
and interest lay in material welfare. Students who lin- 
gered at the Universities until they were forty, could 



322 TUDOR IDEALS 

then live like "drone bees on the fat of the colleges, with- 
holding better wits from the possession of their places. " ^ 

In centres so self-contained, there was opportunity for 
abuses to creep in. The rich foundations and attractive 
surroundings drew a class who, already conservative by 
instinct, found there confirmation for natural inclinations. 
In such an atmosphere, the main interest gathered around 
persons and places instead of ideas. Foundations given 
to provide for the indigent, were diverted from their 
original intention and masters themselves were not free 
from the suspicion of bribery.'^ Leicester's enemies ac- 
cused him of appointing at his pleasure the heads of 
colleges and disposing of fellowships by favouritism and 
corruption.^ 

Yet poor men's sons attended the colleges. When 
William Thomas described the University of Padua, 
he contrasted it with Oxford and Cambridge where so 
many of the students were base born. Examples like 
Gabriel Harvey, the son of a rope maker, of Marlowe the 
cobbler's son, and Spenser the watchmaker's, occur to 
the memory. The choice of students was not drawn 
from any caste and the sins of the system can hardly be 
laid at the door of exclusiveness. But without fixed 
method or intention, the colleges reflected the tone of a 
certain class and freely admitted to preferment only those 
who chose to conform to their own standards. Gabriel 
Harvey relates that his master's degree had at first been 
refused him on the ground of his being fond of parodoxes 
and given to defend strange doctrines even against Aris- 
totle.^ 

The University was a nursery for preachers and law- 
yers, but scholarship remained on a lower level than on 
the Continent. Joseph Scaliger felt frankly disappointed 
with Cambridge and was struck by its atmosphere of lazi- 
ness and narrowness. Giordano Bruno was unfavourably 
impressed by Oxford, where he found a constellation of 
pedantic ignorance and conceit coupled with rustic rude- 



CLASSICISM AND THE UNIVERSITIES 323 

ness.^° The academic polish of the age in its relation to 
events, was mainly seen in the flood of classical orations, 
plays, and verses, by which the scholastic instinct re- 
duced humanism to a lifeless expression. The reaction 
against the clumsy language of the schoolmen came in 
the attention lavished on style and in Bacon's opinion 
the first evil effect of the new learning was witnessed 
when men studied words and not matter. 

The disputations in the ancient tongues and the per- 
formances of Latin and Greek comedies and tragedies, 
given on the occasion of royal visits to the Universities, 
show one aspect of humanism grafted upon academic life. 
Knowledge of the classics found an outlet in such effu- 
sions as were written in Greek, Latin and even Hebrew, 
to commemorate the death of a national hero like Sid- 
ney. ^^ Yet the Renaissance meant something deeper 
than this. Although the leaders of the University were 
not aware of its revelation, many of the students knew 
instinctively that there was more. Gabriel Harvey felt 
satisfaction that scholars had become active rather than 
contemplative philosophers and above everything else 
wished to be something more than learned; even Aris- 
totle came to be as little read as Duns Scotus.^^ Young 
University men, often half educated, like Marlowe, Greene 
and Nash, forsook collegiate narrowness to seek fortune 
or failure in London. 

The academic shortcomings were reflected in the series 
of half measures in education, which came from the in- 
ability either to grasp or to impart the new doctrines. 
Those gifted with rich scholarship remained a minority 
whose influence was never a real gauge. The attempts 
of a few scholars to introduce classical metres into Eng- 
lish, were rather imitations of what Italians and French 
had done, than a direct impelling wish to copy the an- 
cients. Antiquity was never a living world to English- 
men. It remained for all save a few, something exter- 
nal, a style more than a doctrine, a lesson more than a 



324 TUDOR IDEALS 

creed. Alone, the greatest mind of the age realized how 
immense was the opportunity missed. Bacon in the 
"Advancement of Learning" criticised the entire Uni- 
versity idea in Europe, as fitting men only for the pro- 
fessions and not for the pursuits of arts and sciences. He 
saw the need for radical reform, beginning with an in- 
crease in the teachers' stipends which were so low as not 
to attract the best brains. In his judgment, the prac- 
tice of teaching at all Universities required entire over- 
hauling. Their traditions still dated from an age of 
darkness and they took insufficient account of the real 
conditions of life. 



XII. THE DIFFUSION OF EDUCATION 

A DESIRE for education extending far beyond any group 
or class was among the new ideas. Man discovering him- 
selfj instinctively felt the need to garner his mind. A half 
unconscious secular drift had been weaning away instruc- 
tion from the clergy even before the Reformation. The 
hope of reformers in the Renaissance lay in making edu- 
cation general for all and no longer confined to priests 
and a few of gentle birth. 

During the Fifteenth Century the instruction of the 
lower classes had been utterly neglected and that of the 
upper if less so than is often supposed, had little in com- 
mon with cultivation. A knowledge of legal terms and 
processes was frequent, and of bad Latin and French not 
unusual,^ but there was slight interest taken in cultiva- 
tion or any broad purpose beyond the practical necessi- 
ties of life. The new age, however, recognized in educa- 
tion the foundation of the State, with practical results 
which were seen during the course of the century. En- 
tire classes, previously illiterate or whose instruction had 
been confined to the rudimentary notions they had 
picked up from mentors almost as illiterate as themselves, 
for the first time were given opportunity for instruction. 
Education was at the basis of all proposed reforms and 
the finer minds of the age looked forward to seeing the 
riches of the Church used for this purpose. Henry VIII 
entertained originally some such idea and Wolsey, to his 
credit, endowed with ecclesiastical property both his col- 
lege at Oxford and his Ipswich school. The early reformers 
like Brynklow, Crowley, and Simon Fish, all urged that 
the land taken from religious houses should go to main- 
tain common schools. 

32s 



326 TUDOR IDEALS 

Sir William Forrest urged that all children be sent to 
school from the age of four and afterward taught some 
handicraft.^ The hopes of the reformers in this direction 
were over-ambitious. Seeking far-reaching innovations 
they accomplished much less than they set out to do. 

The ripened fruit of the Renaissance was the individ- 
ual. The seed for collective measures of social ameliora- 
tion remained imperfect and half nebulous, amid 
plans whose fruition could only come much later. Yet 
the ideas of the early reformers persisted. Under Eliz- 
abeth, Geoffrey Fen ton wrote in favour of free schools, 
suggesting provisions to endow these,^ and Puritans like 
Stubbes, advocated a vast extension of education with 
the removal of all hindrances which had hitherto stood 
in the way. In his opinion every parish was to have its 
schoolmaster who was first to be examined for charac- 
ter and knowledge.^ The wish for education lowered its 
level to circles where it had before been unattainable. 
Incompletely though the new ideals were realized, many 
a village for the first time had its Hugh Evans teach 
country lads the rudiments of Latin and do more for the 
knowledge of antiquity than the classical scholarship of 
a Walter Haddon. 

One result of this diffusion lay in the increased social 
sympathy brought out through the contact of differ- 
ent classes. Ideas of Renaissance education are apt to be 
formed by the great exceptions. Surrey's description 
of his own bringing up at Windsor is typical of only a 
small circle. The same fault can be found with Elyot's 
"Governour" intended solely for those of gentle birth, 
and little applicable to the vast majority. But the castle 
system of training was being superseded. Whether be- 
cause of new ideas or new facilities, the sons of gentle- 
men often studied side by side with the sons of farmers 
and small tradesmen. This fact may have been among 
the causes why there was never the same social rift in 
England as on the Continent. Philip Sidney attended 



THE DIFFUSION OF EDUCATION 327 

school at Shrewsbury. Even foreign boys were sent to 
English public schools, and four youths who came from 
Muscovy to study English and Latin, were distributed 
between Eton and Winchester.^ 

A broadly humanistic purpose directed these schools. 
Wolsey had outlined a programme for his foundations at 
Ipswich. The basis of instruction was to be classical in 
the sense that the great Latin poets and prose writers were 
all to be read, but the underlying idea of education was 
the development of the pupil's character. Beyond this 
the training of youth was to be physical. Outside the 
school walls, archery was long regarded as of real signif- 
icance in the education of boys, both as a sport and as a 
means of national defence. 

A serious wish to improve educational methods was 
characteristic of the Renaissance and although England 
lagged behind other countries in breadth of scholarship, 
it felt the same interest in instruction. The wave of the 
new culture reached England more tardily than on the 
Continent and after its initial force was already spent. 
In its weakened form, already modified by the nationalism 
of the countries through which it passed, it came to a 
land where an instinctive national force had always pos- 
sessed strong roots and where even the learned were re- 
luctant to relinquish any part of their racial inheri- 
tance. Hence the welcome given to the ancients was at 
once affected by a point of view which found support in 
the later continental example with its growing recogni- 
tion of the value of the national tongue. 

Ideas of this nature were not hostile to the humanist 
spirit but only to the distorted outlook which previously 
had allowed accomplished classical scholars to remain 
unable to express their thoughts in the vulgar tongue. 
The English idea was to make Latin a complementary 
language, and to such subordination may be due the hap- 
pier results of the national genius than in those con- 
tinental states where a purer classicism prevailed. This 



328 TUDOR IDEALS 

tendency was more instinctive than conscious, though 
Ciceronianism never attained the popularity it enjoyed in 
Italy, and was regarded by a mind like Philip Sidney 
with indifference. 

The greatest difficulty was to reconcile Latin with 
Christian doctrine, but this was overcome in part by 
orthodox instruction being given in the texts of the 
Renaissance like the "Bucolics" of Mantuanus, or the 
"Zodiac of Life" of Palingenius. In England Chris- 
topher Ocland composed a heroic poem in Latin hexame- 
ter known as the Anglorum Prcelia and tried through 
friends at court to have this adopted in the public 
schools instead of pagan poets "from which the youth of 
the realm doth rather receive infection in manners than 
advancement in virtue."^ 

The classical current filtering through wider channels 
fortunately became diluted. National and Puritan in- 
fluences attacking from different sides transformed it 
into something in nearer relation to the nation and more 
comprehensible to the racial genius. This result was both 
facilitated and hastened by other circumstances. The 
immense novelty of the Sixteenth Century lay in no longer 
restricting the possibility of education solely to those who 
had studied at learned institutions. If the printing press 
was to provide the mechanical device which made possi- 
ble this new diffusion, the human element came from the 
multitude of those who with greater or less acquaintance 
of the new learning then popularized erudition. 

For the first time it was recognized that man could be- 
come cultivated by reading. Far more important than 
the scholarship of grammarians was the popular form 
such interest took. A new field open to all was brought 
within the culture of the age mainly through translation. 
The ancient poets and prose writers began to be read in 
their English renderings. About the middle of the Six- 
teenth Century it became possible to have a smattering of 
the classics without the knowledge of one word of Latin. 



THE DIFFUSION OF EDUCATION 329 

Collections of letters were made to provide models se- 
lected from antiquity as well as from contemporary- 
humanists, who wrote in the ancient tongue.^ 

Such superficial acquaintance despite the pedant's 
scorn, was in certain respects of more real importance 
than a truer scholarship. Latin and Greek at their best 
were indigestible elements when introduced into English 
civilization, and the inherent difficulties of their study- 
deterred the majority- from pursuing it. The wells of 
English were hardly ever reached through the ancient 
texts and oftener sullied by the inkhorn. The real test 
of perfect assimilation lies in departure from the original. 
An accurate imitation remains always faulty because too 
lifeless to exert permanent influence. The Renaissance 
only attained full meaning in England, when it began 
to affect those, who in every station, and with every de- 
gree of comprehension, were responsive to the new ideas. 

The subtler processes by which such changes came 
about are necessarily obscure. It is easy to count schools 
and enumerate editions of books, but these were only the 
portals for the new ferment. The reason why the latter 
became connected with antiquity was that above the 
pedantry of the learned, men were able to feel for the first 
time in a thousand years, that their instinctive and con- 
scious aspirations, their ideals and ambitions, could trace 
their origin to the writings of classical times, and strike 
out fresh roots from imitative beginnings. The Eng- 
lish popularity of Ovid is explicable in this way. The 
translator Golding speaks of himself as a student who 
travelled " to enrich our tongue with knowledge hereto- 
fore not common to our vulgar speech," and apologized 
for its paganism by declaring that it was written before 
the knowledge of the true God, and that the mythological 
divinities were only to be regarded as symbols. 

The poets of the age took it for granted that their read- 
ers were familiar with the machinery of ancient mythol- 
ogy. Village schoolmasters and players brought to wide 



330 TUDOR IDEALS 

circles a superficial knowledge which passed out of books 
into life. Those ignorant of the rudiments of Latin 
could read in translations about ancient philosophers 
and poets, or anecdotes of Greek Sophists, and Roman 
Senators. The gods of Olympus were then living to far 
wider circles than a few scholars. A certain familiarity 
with classicism derived from various channels was ele- 
mental and almost universal throughout England and 
shows not the least important side of the new learning. 
An odd jumble borrowed out of ancient history and my- 
thology was everywhere introduced into popular litera- 
ture. In the Induction to the "Spanish Tragedy" the 
prowling ghost of Andrea talks with Minos and Rhada- 
manthus! 

Englishmen in the Sixteenth Century felt an awakened 
craving for sensuous beauty. They looked around to 
find a dress for such instincts which could not be gratified 
in the dull pages of their own past literature. The inquis- 
itive mind of the age, avid for novelty and seeking to 
mould the expression of imaginative beauty, found means 
to gratify this taste in antiquity. The paganism of a 
university educated Marlowe, or the paganism of a gram- 
mar school educated Shakespeare, were expressions of 
this time. Neither was antique in any scholarly sense. 
Both were in far too intimate a relation to the age to 
confine their genius within any rigid imitation. From 
antiquity both borrowed only a subject-matter and a 
dress still new in England and enveloped this with their 
own luxurious trappings. The gorgeousness which in 
Italy adorned canvas and brocade was moulded by them 
into words. Leander and Adonis offered occasion for the 
sensuous craving of an era which borrowed foreign names 
and framework for a native product. In such a sense the 
lesson of antiquity became real by its own deficiencies. 
Learning ran past the Universities to lodge itself in those 
who with "small Latin and less Greek" breathed the 
revelation of the ancient world. 



THE DIFFUSION OF EDUCATION 331 

Classicism in England left the study to pass into life, 
A great movement is rarely of immediate development. 
More often its vitality seems stunted or exposed to de- 
feat and reaction. The reason is, that new ideas are able 
at first to bring only a shallow impact on the country and 
the purer their form the more restricted remains their 
influence. To achieve victory they have to adjust them- 
selves to the spirit of the land itself in evolution, and 
thereby modify their own nature. As this is largely an 
unconscious process it takes time for accomplishment. 
The great forces which have stirred the world have never 
gone ahead unchecked but always have waited for victory. 

In its original wave the Renaissance merely attempted 
to copy the ancient world. With the growth of nation- 
ality in action as in thought, the desire to vie with Greece 
and Rome arose. Writing in the middle of the century, 
William Thomas alluded to the literary output of Italy, 
and remarked that if it lasted another ten years it would 
rival that of antiquity. Bacon with all his classical train- 
ing was against the dead hand of the past. Revering 
antiquity he deplored the influence it exercised in pre- 
serving error. The real triumph of the classical spirit 
came when men felt that they were no longer kept in its 
thrall. 



XIII. THE DISCOVERY OF LETTERS 

English letters in the Sixteenth Century sprang out of a 
thin soil. Cultivation was an exotic, and like all plants 
of foreign origin, required special treatment. Patronage 
became a vital prop for learning. A rude and in many 
respects primitive community, still largely illiterate, offers 
a condition little favourable for interest in polite letters. 
The struggling efforts of the latter, instinctively seeking a 
foothold, attach themselves to the mighty and require a 
support which brings its own penalty. Until literature 
is able to strike out for itself it tends to fawn on the great 
by making appeal to them. Under such conditions it 
can rarely attain genius. Cultivation, refinement, learn- 
ing, industry, and critical appreciation, are at best secon- 
dary qualities which arise out of narrow groups and do 
not lead to any broad human interest until they become 
leavened by new ingredients. 

The artificial protection of patronage was a necessary 
stage in the process of early development. A country 
self-contained and as insular in a narrow sense as was 
England in the Fifteenth Century, tends, if left to itself, 
to lapse into a lowering of standards which makes it drift 
toward barbarism. The correctives to such tendencies 
come through the assimilation of extraneous elements. 
Remote as they may seem to the national genius, the 
tests of their value cannot be gauged by any narrow meas- 
ure. The law of intellectual progress is contained in the 
elements of contact which permit an alien inspiration to 
adjust itself into a different national groove. 

The influence of learning and of poetry which then 
reached England was foreign and mainly Italian. It re- 
quired protection to cast its anchor and this it could only 

332 



THE DISCOVERY OF LETTERS 333 

find among the great. The literary origins of the Renais- 
sance sprang from no popular roots, for the pure imitation 
of antiquity could by its nature never make a popular 
appeal. 

The bridge which attached England to the Renais- 
sance was in the beginning narrow and insecure, yet its 
importance proved enormous for across it passed the in- 
fluences which were to civilize the country. ^ Patronage 
and court favour, if on a less generous scale in England 
than on the Continent, provided an encouragement which 
hastened the introduction of the new ideas and allowed 
the nation thereby to anticipate its own evolution. 

With the diffusion of printing and the birth of a read- 
ing public, there came an intermediary stage in the dis- 
covery of letters. The scholar or poet, no longer obliged 
to rely exclusively on the enlightenment or vanity of a 
patron, could yet not afford to disregard him. The growth 
of circulation reduced the call on private generosity. No 
book appeared without some fulsome dedication to an 
exalted personage though the three pounds which Peele 
received for dedicating his "Honour of the Garter" to 
Lord Northumberland, seem barely enough to corrupt 
his judgm.ent, while the many dedications to Philip Sid- 
ney, were doubtless more honorific than remunerative. 

As a rule, the writers hardly dared to stand alone before 
the world but required support. And while ideally the 
poet could praise the poet's state and feel proudly con- 
scious of the art which raised his mind "above the starry 
sky" in practice he still wrote only for a small public and 
remained largely dependent on the bounty of a few pa- 
trons. Contemporaries could compare Spenser to Theoc- 
ritus, Virgil and Petrarch, but practically the latter had 
only a small court circle to rely on for his public, and his 
"Faerie Queene" took years to run into a second edition. 
The greatest period of English letters was not able^ to 
stand alone but required extraneous devices. The effusive 
flattery which disturbs the modern mind by its extrava- 



334 TUDOR IDEALS 

gance, becomes more comprehensible when one realizes 
the abject poverty of those who sought to make a living 
by their pen. Henslowe's Diary states that he paid no 
dramatist more than eleven pounds for a single play until 
after 1613, when the commercial value of dramatic writ- 
ing was raised. The beginnings of independence in letters 
were, however, as unsavoury as beginnings often are. In 
Italy Aretines' blackmailing instincts had discovered the 
pecuniary possibilities of the pen. His English imitators 
like Greene and Nash first found in literature the means 
to eke out a questionable livelihood and doubtless sold 
their pen with profit during the Martin Marprelate con- 
troversy. These ancestors of Grub Street were to prove 
that a new reading public had been born whose opinion 
was worth capturing. 

The tendency of letters in a period of conscious activity 
is to claim representative functions. In this sense medi- 
ocrity provides the safer test, for the path of genius is not 
that of the multitude. It is easy to pick out among the 
Elizabethan dramatists certain characteristics of force and 
energy which to our modern mind make them the literary 
equivalent of Drake and Hawkins, but it would be as 
easy to construct from them still another world which 
bears no relation to the England of that day. The con- 
nection between life and letters is one where ready-made 
theories easily plunge into pitfalls. 

Yet letters in the Sixteenth Century expressed for the 
first time something more than didacticism. The discov- 
ery greater than any other, was the feeling of life in all 
its divers forms. The older idea of separate compart- 
ments of existence was receding before the new reve- 
lation. Literature embraced what would before have 
been regarded as its negation. Fresh interest was felt for 
every manifestation of the human intelligence. The 
younger Scaliger visiting England studied the old ballads 
with keen appreciation; Sidney relates how their recital 
moved him to tears. England achieved maturity in the 



THE DISCOVERY OF LETTERS 335 

expressive power of literature. This ran parallel with 
the national evolution which it reflected. Not in art, not 
in music, but in poetry English genius discovered the world 
and expressed in words its own aspirations. 

Oddly enough literary personality in England remained 
undeveloped. While in Italy men of letters were con- 
spicuous, English writers in spite of talent as high were 
less impressive. Marlowe might have become a great 
figure. But Shakespeare whose genius created so many 
characters, as a man survives mainly as a blank, except 
for the record of a few commonplace stage activities and 
the trivial doings of a petty squire wrangling with his 
neighbours. No paradox could be stranger than the 
antithesis between his mind's creations conquering the 
world of imagination and the pettiness of his personal 
interests. Other men of letters who left their mark on 
the age like Wyatt, or later Sidney, did so because of 
distinction elsewhere. Spenser as a man was more a 
disappointed small official than a poet. Not till Ben 
Jonson did the author take his place in the life of the age. 



XIV. THE CULTIVATION OF LIFE 

Sir Thomas Elyot had lamented the slight esteem in 
which letters were held in England. Years later Bacon 
was to express the same idea. The sneers aroused by cul- 
tivation must have been frequent if such apologies offer 
any indication. In contrast to this, were the circum- 
stances then continually arising which required the abil- 
ities of the soldier, the diplomat, the administrator, the 
navigator, and the colonist. The age with all its theo- 
retical didacticism, and new programmes of education 
had yet not organized the rudiments of any public service, 
and the State found itself obliged to call in men for high 
position in a haphazard manner. This accounts for the 
multiple activities of the same individual, who crossed with 
facility from one field to the other. While it does not 
explain genius, it assists in understanding the humanistic 
preparation which made this possible and fitted the finer 
minds for their tasks. The activities of man were the re- 
sult of a classical and not of a technical education. 

Owing to this the ideal of letters and of action was better 
understood in the Sixteenth Century than in later ages. 
Men were not yet encumbered by the weight of an estab- 
lished career with its slow gradations toward success. 
Such a spirit as this enabled Sir Christopher Hatton who 
at the time of his appointment possessed little or no knowl- 
edge of the law, to fill with dignity the Lord Chancellorship. 

Cultivation, as a rule, stopped short with the knowl- 
edge of antiquity. Beyond that education came from an 
extraordinary diversity of events. The human pulse was 
beating quickly and imagination was easily fired. In 
every circle of life men gazed on a broader outlook, and 
felt their capacity in a way never before realized. 

Circumstances of different order contributed to create 

336 



THE CULTIVATION OF LIFE 337 

a situation where letters led to action. Learning and 
arms were always the twin goals of the Renaissance in- 
herited as ideals from antiquity. Their union was realized, 
conspicuously, in the brilliant talents of Raleigh and Sid- 
ney, but also in those minor lights who like Gascoigne 
and Churchyard achieved the twin ideal of adventure 
and letters, yet felt prouder of their deeds than of their 
verse. 

In an age so vigorous as the Sixteenth Century, poetry 
was regarded more as an accomplishment than as an end 
in itself. The fact that letters formed part of life was to 
be a stride toward the embellishment of personality. Life 
offered a consistent ideal not without elevation, for the 
welfare of the state became its ultimate reason. 

The sense of nationality which asserted itself for the 
first time was built up by this association. The classical 
training in men made them conscious of what had before 
been instinctive and shaped an ideal of patriotism, nour- 
ished by letters and furthered by deeds. Dyer, Essex, 
Oxford were all men of action, and Fulke Greville could 
write of his friend Sidney: "His end was not in writing 
even while he wrote." 

Letters kept a more intimate relation to the man of 
action than is possible in an era of greater specialization. 
Marlowe regarded eloquence as the instrument by which 
the imagination should be freed. Theridamas acknowl- 
edges to Tamburlaine that he is "won with thy words." 
In "Julius Caesar" the mob sways in response to elo- 
quence. 

The same reasons which had favoured the enlargement 
of kingly power contributed to the rounding of the individ- 
ual. The greatness of the age was brought out by the 
blending of nationalism and of cosmopolitanism. Pride in 
England yet familiarity and sympathy with all the world. 
The prentices who thronged the Globe were familiar with 
the Roman imperiaHsm of Anthony and the Venetian im- 
perialism of Othello. Nothing human was strange to 



338 TUDOR IDEALS 

them. No longer an audience of courtiers but the popu- 
lace of London responded to this revelation. 

Cultivation graced the lives of people removed from the 
scholar's study. In a double sense the effect of the Ren- 
aissance had been to secularize learning. It took it 
out of its pedagogic surroundings, and brought it into 
many a home which had before been barren of light. 
Henceforth, the taste for letters must be followed through 
far wider channels. A race of men steeped in the human- 
istic education begin to adorn the annals of English his- 
tory. One is able to trace their succession through Sir 
John Cheke, Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Thomas Wilson, As- 
cham, Buckhurst and Bacon. Though Cheke and Wilson 
were classical scholars of high attainment these men were 
of the generation of Renaissance statesmen who brought 
to the handling of public affairs a well-governed mind, 
free from academic seclusion. Letters formed part of the 
individual but they were far from being the soul of the 
individual. The sterile half century which elapsed before 
the brilliant promise of the courtly makers was fufillled, 
allowed for evolution in the cultivation of personality. 

The humanistic wave spread in ripples through the 
nation. What had once been singular and remarkable 
became of common achievement. A certain level of cul- 
ture percolated through the entire people. From the 
Ciceronian Latin at court to the hog Latin of the village 
school few there were so dense as to ignore its rudiments. 

One is too prone to care only for the brilliancy of attain- 
ment and pay scant notice to the silent years of germina- 
tion. The greater part of the Sixteenth Century in Eng- 
land intellectually speaking was almost barren. Such 
sterility is often attributed to the ambiguities surround- 
ing the national creed and the succession to the throne, 
reacting on the popular imagination. It was more likely 
caused by the lack of any foundation for the expression 
of the new ideas. As soon as these had been understood 
by levels where they were previously unknown, the har- 



THE CULTIVATION OF LIFE 339 

vest was reaped with all the bounty of virgin soil just 
planted. Poetry emerged from its early confinement 
at court to be welcomed in a wider sphere. Literature 
became an occupation, and the drama a road to fame. 
Writing, which had been didatic, became a career. An 
appreciation of letters grew general. Modern diarists 
then appeared who were men about town, inconspicuous, 
living on the outskirts of the great world, but with keen 
humour, literary sense and a fondness for life. Harring- 
ton was one of a cultivated and even carping circle of crit- 
ics whose existence would have been impossible forty 
years earlier. Sir William Cornwallis is another example 
of the cultivated personality of his time, a dilettante with 
literary tastes, aiming to follow Montaigne. With intel- 
lectual curiosity, a wide culture and power of analysis, 
he has the modern spirit. The gap of centuries had been 
filled. Our pedigree of cultivation dates from such men 
far more than from higher genius. 

Although no sudden break with the past explains the 
new atmosphere, its transformation was no less complete. 
England could not boast of epistolary collections such as 
Italy or even France produced. No Bembo, no Tasso in 
England thought of collecting his letters for posterity, but 
certain of Sidney's deserve a high place if only for the 
manliness they breathe. 

The ability to write letters became part of an educa- 
tion. The well rounded personality long known in Italy 
entered henceforth into English life. Such was Sir Henry 
Wotton. His services to the state as a diplomat were val- 
uable. His poetic talent was more than that of a mere 
dilettante. As a letter writer he showed wit which marks 
the advance into modernity. He was interested in the 
arts. His achievement is far from great, but his cultiva- 
tion was considerable. ^ He is the modern man, fond of the 
pleasures of life, the round of country visits, of sport, and 
of social intercourse. 

With the cultivation of life came a response between writ- 



340 TUDOR IDEALS 

ers and readers such as had before hardly existed. Others 
than noblemen became patrons of letters. The discovery 
of the world marked the discovery of its literature. Spen- 
ser could admire the imaginative talent of the Irish bards 
though he deplored their making heroes of thieves. Sid- 
ney, seeking literary example in his "Apology," no longer 
restrains his choice to antiquity but comments on the re- 
spect shown for poets in Turkey and among unlettered 
Indians. Puttenham with wide interest in letters singles 
out the "American, Perusine and the very Cannibal" 
who appreciate poetry. Daniel searching the globe to 
find examples to prove the superiority of melody over 
quantity, cites Turks, Slavonians, and Arabs, and men- 
tions China as the example of a land not barbarous where 
anapests and trochees were unknown. The world had 
been discovered not only for commerce and for power, but 
for letters. 

The modern conception of English life dates from Eliz- 
abeth. The real break with the medieval past had been 
effected less by the Wars of the Roses and the accession 
of the Tudors, than during the last half of the Sixteenth 
Century when the harvest was ripening in silence. This 
was in obedience to a frequent if usually unobserved his- 
toric law. The seeds of a great movement are sown nearly 
always in ground imperfectly prepared. The movement 
very quickly attains unexpected success because of the 
commanding position of its apostles. But if conditions 
are not ripe, an apparent reaction sets in which well-nigh 
effaces it. On the surface few traces are left, but below 
the ground the roots once planted spread in silence and 
years later appear again unexpectedly. It was thus with 
the influence of the Renaissance in England. It came as 
a fruit of foreign origin which grew only in a fertile soil. 
Then it disappeared and its traces seemed to vanish, till 
phoenix like, it rose once more above the surface with 
the genius of poets sprung from the people and the vast 
leaven of culture in the life of the nation. 



NOTES 



NOTES 

In this table are included only the principal refer- 
ences. The early printed books mentioned are all to 
be found in the British Museum. The manuscript 
diary of the French Ambassador de Maisse is in the 
library of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Paris. 

For the general history of the age in England the 
writer refers to the books of Professors Gairdner, 
Busch, Brewer, Fisher, Sir Sidney Lee and especially 
Prof. A. F. Pollard, to mention only the principal his- 
torians of the period from whose labours he has bene- 
fited. He wishes further to refer with gratitude to the 
valuable suggestions he has obtained from Dr. Burck- 
hardt's "Civilization of the Italian Renaissance." 

PART I 
Chapter I 

^ Ital. Rel. 1500 Camden Soc, p. 34. 

2 Reprinted in Tudor Tracts, Edit, by A. F. Pollard, p. 20. 

^ Camden, Hist. Edit. 1635, p. 74. 

* Reprinted in the Appendix of the Chron. of Q. Jane, Camden Soc, pp. 86, sq. 

^ Admonition to the Nobility and People of England, 1588, pp. 4, sq. 

® Leicester's Commonwealth, pp. 124, sq. 

"> Ibid, p. 34. 

^ A Conference about the Next Succession, N. D., p. 196. 

Chapter II 

1 Memoirs, Edit. Paris, 1901, I, 195. 

2 Utopia, Edit. Arber, p. 34. 
' Marillac, p. 211. 

^ Ibid, p. 211. 

^ Sir T. Smith, p. 59. 

^ Hentzner, p. 49. 

^ Cavendish, (Kelmscott Edit.) p. 236. 

^ Starkey, Dialogue, p. loi. 

^Memoirs, p. 332. 

343 



344 NOTES . 

i«3i Henry VIII, ch. 8. 

" Reprinted in Somers Tracts, III, ser. I, p. 99. 

^2 Cognet, Political Discourses, p. 83; Primaudaye, French Academy, p. 648. 
13 Belloy, Apol. fro. Rege, Cap. 20. 

" Vide Th. Paynell, Dedication to Henry VIII of his transl. of Constan- 
tinus Felicius Durantinus, Conspiracy of Catiline. 
15 Declaration of the end of Traitors, Sig B, 4. 
" Sermons, 1552, f. 88. 
1^ Stubbes, Anat. of Abuses, II, pp. 17, 113. 
1* Cooper, Admonitions, p. 156. 
" Edit. Dyce, p. 133. 
2" Euphues, Edit. Arber, p. 261. 

21 Arraignment of Paris, II, i. 

22 Art of Poetrie, Edit. Arber, p. 66. 

Chapter III 

1 Relazione Michele, /. 22. 

2 Hooker, Eccl. Pol., Bk. VIII, Chs. 2, 3. 

Chapter IV 

1 Ital. Rel., pp. 46, sq. 

2 Cj. Dunbar, Works, pp. 136, 199, 203. 
^ Cavendish, P- 33- 

* The Receiving of the Queen's Majesty into her City of Norwich, London, 
N. D. 

^ Vide Churchyard, The Queen's Entertainment. 
^ Latimer, Sixth Sermon, 1549, p. 181. 
'' Brynklow, p. 10. 

* Naunton, Frag. Reg., p. 20. 

8 Somers Tracts, Edit. 1748, IV, 130. 

10 De Maisse, Ms. Ministere AfF. Etrang, Paris, 1598,/. 228 V. 

11 Harrington, Nug, Ant. I, Gj. 

12 Camden, p. 391. 
1* Naunton, p. 46. 
1* Harrington, I, 67. 
" De Maisse,/. 212. 

1^ Leicester's Correspondence, Camden Soc, p. 108. 

" Ibid., p. 279. 

18 Ibid., p. 243. 

^^ Ibid, p. 112. 

^ Ibid., pp. 175, 240. 

21 Letters of Eliz., Cam. Soc, p. 17. 

22 De Maisse,/. 239, 243, 255, sq. 3isb. 

Chapter V 
iVen. Cal. II,No. 918. 

2 Marillac, pp. 194, 371. 

3 Bacon, Works, Edit. London, 1740, I, 607; II, 428, 441. 

* Camden, p. 536. 

5 Spenser, Colin Clout, I, 69, sq. 

^ Surrey, Works, p. LXI. 

'' Chron. Henry VIII, Edit. Hume, p. 60. 



NOTES 345 

s Camden, p. 534- 

9 Life and Times of Hatton, p. 45 8- , ■ rr- <-> • „j 

10 In addition to Castiglione and Guazzo, the treatises of Guevara, Osorius and 

Sturmius should be read. 

11 Art of Eng. Poes., II, Ch. 25. 

12 Letter to Sidney, 14, Nov., IS79- 

" R. Greene, Quip for an Upstart Courtier. 
" Life of Sidney, p. 69. 
" Mother Hubbard's Tale, 752, sq., 773> J"?- 
16 Life and Times of Hatton, pp. 210, 214. 

"b ra/ounba^r, Works II, 199, 206; Lyndsay, "Papyngo" and "Complaynt 
to the King," cf. also Francis Thynne and Barnfield. 
19 Mother Hubbard's Tale, 11. 896, sq. 

Chapter VI 

1 Epist., Edit. Nichols, I, 423, sq. 

2 W. Thomas. See EUis Orig. Lett., 2d Sen II, 189, sq. 

'* ra?PHmaud\%, French Acad., p. 466; Cognet, p. 83; Blundevile, Counsels, 
1570, Sig. 3 V. 
6 Utopia, p. 62. 
6 Sixth Sermon, 1549; p. 181. 
"> Guevara, Golden Book, Ch. 17. 

8 Brewer, Henry VIII, I, 66. 

9 Busch, England under the Tudors, pp. I33» J?- 
loMarillac, p. 128. 

11 Bacon, I, 721, sq. 

12 "Rede Me and be not Wroth, p. 59- 
" Tree of Commonwealth, p. 19. 

"The Ploughers, p. 28; Ascham, Scholemaster, p. 51. 

15 Blundevile, Of Counsel, Sig D2, E4 v. 

16 Harl. Misc. VII, 565- ^, ^ 

" Fide Grimaldus Goslicius; The Counsellor. 
18 Bacon, Works, I, 606. 

Chapter VII 

1 Comines, II, 4, sq. 

2 Brewer, II, 38, sq. 

3 Leic. Coir., p. I97- 
*Ven. Cal. Ill, No. 50. 

6 Stow, Survey. Edit. Dent, p. l6l. 

6 Friedmann, Anne Boleyn, I, 99. 

7 Roper, p. S3' ^ 

8 Marillac, pp. I9S> 206. 

9 Crowley, passim. 

10 Burnet Edit. 171 S» III» 197- ^ ; 

11 Chron. Henry VIII, Edit. Hume, p. 163. 

12 Leic. Commonwealth, pp. 86, Ii2. 

13 De Maisse, Ms. Cit.,/. 23. 
"Castelnau, p. 116. 
i^Nug. Ant. I, 118, jg. 

16 Leic. Corn, p. 112. 
"Hist., p. 118. 



^346 NOTES 

18 Walsingham to Sir T. Smith, 14 Sept. 72 Digges Compleat Ambassador, 
p. 284. 
i^Brewer, 1, 403. 

20 Poems, Aid. Edit., p. 191. 

21 Lit. Rem. Edw. VI, I, p. CXXVIII. 

22 Life of Hatton, pp. 210, 214. 

23 Camden, p. 225. 

Chapter VIII 

^ Comines, II, 64. 

2 Leic. Corn, p. 173. 

* French Acad., p. 417. 

* PoHtical Discourses, pp. 26, sq. 

^ Battle of Alcazar, III, I, 163, sq. - 

^Utopia, p. 137. 

^ Languet, Apol. for Christian Soldiers, Transl. by H. P., London, 1588. 

* Tragedy of the Cardinal, 11. 240, sq. 

3 The Nobles, Sig. Di. ver. 

10 See Forneron, Phil. II, Vol. Ill, p. 228. 

11 Chamberlain Letters, 3 Feb. 1600. 

12 Reprinted in Somer's Tracts, Ilird Series, I, p. no. 

13 Walsingham to Leicester, 8 Oct., 72 Digges Compleat Ambassador, p. 269. 
" Wals. to Leic, T. Smith, 2 Sept., 72 Digges, p. 239. 

15 Wals. to Council, 24 Sept. 72; Digges, p. 257. 

16 Letter to Wals., 19 Sept. 72; Digges, p. 250. 

" Council to Wals., 9 Sept. 72; Digges, pp. 246, sq. 

18 Digges, p. 249. ^ c . 

19 Justification of Eliz. (Cam. Soc), p. 129. 
2" I'Estoile, Journal, III, 24, sq. 

21 Wals. to Burleigh, 2 March, 1591; Digges, p. 173. 

22 Letters of Eliz. to James VI, Cam. Soc. 1849, pp. 46, sq. 
53 Essay, 46. 

Chapter IX 

1 Sp. Cal. I, 178, sq. 

2 Utopia, p. 81. 

3 Lit. Rem. Edw. VI, II, 480, sq. 

^ ^ Fide A Conference about the Next Succession, N. D. 

B L. Humphrey, Nobility, N. D. 
^ 6 Fide T. Floyd, The Picture of a Perfect Commonwealth, London, 1600. 
.^'f Cognet, pp. 97, sq. 

^ Dialogue, pp. 100, sq. 

9 Ibid., p. 185. 

1" Op. cit., p. 69. 

" Treatise Sig. D. VII; F. VII. 

12 Ibid. Sig. H. See also G. Fenton, A Form of Christian Policy, 1594, p. 77. 

13 Fide Hume Brown, Buchanan, pp. 286, sq. 
" Camden, p. 562. 

Chapter X 

1 Ital. Rel., p. 36. 

2 Roper, p. 16. 

3 Merriman, Cromwell, I, 98. 
^Marillac, p. 371. 



NOTES 347 

^ d'Ewes, Journal, Edit. 1693, p. 66. 
^ Ibid., pp. 236, sq. 
^ Noailles, Ambassades, III, 248. 

^ Arber, Reprint of Register of the Stationers' Company, I, XXIX. 
-^Latimer, Edit. Arber, ist Serm., p. 23; and Seven Sermons, 1552,/. 25b. 
1" Leic. Comm., pp. 196, sq. 
^1 Blast of the Tempest, pp. 32, 50. 

^2 An advertisement touching the controversies of the Church of England. 
^^ The title of the book was "The Gulph Wherein England will be Swallowed 
by the French Marriage," 1581. 

Chapter XI 
1 Roper, pp. 2, sq. 

^ Spenser, Globe Edit., Present State of Ireland, p. 620. 
^ Camden, p. 492. 

* Sir Wm. Cornwallis, Disc, on Seneca, Sig., P. 3, v, sq. 
^ Lit. Rem. II, p. 526. 

* Works, p. 133. 

^ Greville, Life, p. 53. 

* A Conference, pp. 38, 62. 
9 Edw. II, I, IV, 287, sq. 

PART II 

Chapter III 
^ Castelnau, p. 60. 

* Somer's, Tracts; 2d Collect. I, p. 67. 
^ Cavendish, p. 149. 

* A Conference Pt. II, pp. 215, sq. 
^ Frag. Reg., pp. 47, 66. 

6 Works Edit. Oldys, VIII, p. 121. 
^ Massacre of Paris, II, 39. 
8 Battle of Alcazar, II, II, 69, sq. 
^ Euphues and his England, p. 265. 

Chapter IV 

^ Cf. B. de Logue, Discourses of War, Transl. by T. Eliot, 1591, pp. 59, sq. 
See also La Primaudaye, p. 314; Bryskett, pp. 70, sq. 
^ Chamberlain Letters, pp. 54, 157. 
3 Leic. Comm., p. 56. 
^ Ibid., p. 36. 

Chapter V 

^ Sermons, /. 1 10 V. Edit. 1571. 

^ Dialogue bet. Experience and a Courtier, 11. 1069, sq. 

' Lee, Shakespeare, p. 8. 

* Fiaje in Inglaterra, quoted by Forneron, Phil. II, I, 154. 
^ Stubbes, I, 73. 

8 I'Estoile, VII, 405. 

'' Harrison's England, I, 267, sq. 274. 

* Brantome, VII, 405. 

^N. Breton Wit's Trenchman, 1597. 

1" Itiner, in Shakespeare's Europe, Edit. 1903; p. 475. 

" Anat. of Abuses, I, 198. 



348 NOTES 

Chapter VI 

1 See Poggio, Letter, 29 Oct., 1420. 
^ Leic. Comm., p. 104. 
^ First Sermon, pp. 41, sq. 

* Simon Fish, p. 4. 

^ Fide Wm. Roy, Rede me, p. 61. 

® Vox Populi Vox Dei. Skelton's Works, Vol. II, pp. 369, sq. (Pseudo 
Skeltonian.) 
^ Fide "Pleasant Poesye of Princelie Practise," II. 510, sq. 

* Vox Populi, Skelton, Vol. II, p. 372. 
® Latimer, Sermons, Ed. 1591,/. 123. 
" Lever, p. yy, S. Fish, p. 52. 

^1 Dialog., pp. 95, sq. 

^^ Envoy to " Horse, Goose and Sheep," edit, by Furnivall, p. 40, 11. 598, sq. 

^^ Crowley, pp. 87, sq. 

" Lit. Rem., pp. 482, sq. 

^^ Anat. of Abus. 11, 33, sq. 

^^ Toxophilus, p. 153. 

" John Bate, Dialogue bet. a Christian and an atheist, 1589, p. 160. 

Chapter VII 

^ Order of Chivalry, Edit. F. S. Ellis, p. 99. 

^ W. Patten, see Pollard's Tudor Tracts, pp. 102, 106. 

^ Dialogue, p. 82. 

^ Pastime of Pleasure, p. 29. 

6 Works, III, 238. 

^ Sat. of the Three Estates, 11. 4370, sq. 

'' Ibid., I. 3820. 

* Orpheus and Eurydice. 

* The Praise of the Age, Edit. T. Schipper, Vienna, 1902. 
^° Passion of Christ. 

Chapter VIII 
^ Memoirs, I, 195. 
^ L. Humphrey, Sig. I, 5, sq. 
^ Camden, p. iii. 

* Ibid., p. 200. 

^ Busch, p. 283. 

" Starkey, Dial., pp. 109, sq. 

" Observations in a Libel, Works I, 520. 

^ Fide Book of St. Albans, pp. 93, sq.; G. Markham, Gentl. Acad., p. 94, v. 

^ Peacham, pp. 14, sq. 

^^ Feme, pp. 90, s^. 

^^ Sir Thomas Smith, Commonwealth, pp. 37, sq. 

^^ Segar, p. 230; Feme, pp. 44, 50, sq. 

^^ Present State of Ireland, p. 672'. 

" Segar, p. 123. 

'^ Starkey, pp. 189, sq. 

1^ Latimer, The Ploughers, p. 28. 

" Scholem aster, p. 68. 

1* Steel Glas, p. 62. 

^^ Copley Letters, p. 18. 

^° Letters, p. 20. 



NOTES 349 

Chapter IX 

^ This passage is cited by John Bossewell in the Works of Armory, Lond., 1572, 
/. 14, v., sq. 

2 Rom. of the Rose, Kelmscott Edit., p. 265. 

' C/. G. Douglas, Prologue to IV Book of Virgil, Ed. Small; Palace of Honour, 
I, p. 75; Henryson, Orpheus and Euridyce. 

* Tree of Comm,, p. 19. 

^ For Italian influences in the theory of aristocracy, see writer's Ital. Ren. in 
Eng., pp. 61, sq. 

* Osorius, Eng. Transl., vide,f. 3/ v., 16 v./. 20. 
^ Governour, II, p. 126. 

* Works I, 290. 

9 Sig. G. VII. 

*" Works, p. 91. 

^^ Vide, Scholemaster, pp. 51, sq. 
^^ Counsels, 1570, Sig., p. I. 
" Cf. Feme, First Fruits,/. 36 v. 

^^ Book of St. Albans, pp. 42, sq.; Juliana Berners, /. 49b., sq. Cf. also Leigh, 
"Accedens of Armory,"/. 2, v. sq. 
^^ Christian PoHcy, p. 313. 
^^ Works of Armory, 1572,/. 18. 

" R. Barret, The Theorike and Practike of Modern Wars, p. 13. 
^^ Honor, Military and Civil, p. 270. 

^* Baldwin, A Treatise of Moral Philosophy, /. 96, sq.; Bryskett, p. 5. 
2" Epis. Dedicatory,/. 6 v. in Princess Elizabeth, a Godly Meditation, 1548. 
2^ Cf. Tears of the Muses, 11. 80, sq. 
22 Euphues, pp. 87, 190, j-^. 
^^ Euphues and his Ephoebus, p. 135. 

Chapter X 
^ Brewer, I, p. 64. 

2 Scholemaster, p. 61. 

3 Peacham, Comp. Gent., p. 31, and Preface. 

* Leicester to Walsingham, 10 April, 1586, Leic. Corr., p. 228. 
^ Frag. Reg., p. 15. 

^ Vide, Institution of a Gentleman, 1568. 
^ Educ. of Children, Sig. E 3, v., sq. 

* Elyot I, 172, sq.; Ascham, Scholemaster, p. 64; Toxophilus; p. 37. 
^ Queen Elizabeth Acad., p. 10. 

Chapter XI 

^ See Sir H. Knyvett, Defence of the Realm, 1596; Starkey, pp. 186, sq. 

2 Vide Marillac, p. 88. 

^ Ascham, Toxophilus, p. 36. 

* Monluc, Commentaires, I, 322. 

* Vide T. Churchyard, Reprinted in Tudor Tracts, p. 327. 

^ Vide J. Fortescue in Shak. Eng. I, 126, to whom the writer is indebted for 
many of the facts in this chapter. 
^ Leic. Corn, p. 392. 

* Sir T. Smythe, Discourses, Proem. 
^ Pres. State of Ireland, p. 661. 

10 Corr., p. 428. 



3 so 



NOTES 



"Walsingham to Sir T. Smith, II, Jan., 1572; Digges, p. 307. See also 
Fenton, Letters, p. 429. 

12 Hist., p. 67. 

13 Chamberlain, Letters, 17 May, 1602. 
" Honor, Military and Civil, p. 117. 

1^ D. Digges, Paradoxes, pp. 96, 109. 

1* Frag. Reg., p. 329. 

" Life and Times of Hatton, App. XXXVII. 

18 Letter, 15 Feb., 1578. 

PART III 

Chapter I 

1 Dial., p. 9, see also, p. 52. 

2 Utopia, p. 72. 

2 Vide J. Proctor's account of Wyatt's Rebellion, 1555 Tudor Tracts, 
pp. 232, sq. 

* Sir J. Smythe, Discourses, Proem. 
^ Starkey, p. 43. 

^ Cornwallis, Essay, Sig. K 7, vers. 8. 
^Anatomizing, Somers Tracts, IV, 389, sq. 

Chapter II 

1 Cavendish, p. 274. 

2 W. Baldwin; in Mirror for Magistrates, II, 203. 

3 Works, p. 8. 

^ Utopia, pp. Ill, sq.; see pp. 90, sq. 

^ Vide Discourse of the Commonweal, pp. 58, sq. 

^Interlude of Gentylness and Nobylyte, circa, 1535, pp. 25, 50. 

^ De Inv., Trans, by T. Langley, /. XXIX. 

8 Vide Seven Sermons, 1552,/. 6,/. 10, etc. 

^ Strype, Mem. of Cranmer, I, 127. 

1" Pollard, England under Somerset, p. 223. 

11 Humphrey, Sig. 2 VII, sq. 

12 Vide Gwillim, Display of Heraldrie. 

13 Stubbes, Anat. of Ab. I, 29, 43. 

" Life and Times of Hatton, pp. 227. 

1^ Fulke Greville, p. 24, sq. 

1^ Poem on Cromwell; Mirror for Magistrates, II, 506, sq. 

Chapter III 

1 Paston Letters, I, 1 10. 

2 Ibid., I, 175. 

3 Prologue to his Cato, 1483. 

* Henry Binnyman, Dedication of his translation of Appian, 1578. 
^ Discourses on Livy, III, 41. 

* Surrey, p. 60. 

^ Lever, Sermons, p. I3S- 

* Utopia, p. 13. 

8 Starkey, pp. 2, 7. 

1" Preface to "Knowledge which maketh a wise man," 1534. 
" Poynet; Sig. D, VII, see also Sig. E, VII; Sir John Hayward wrote on this 
subject. 

12 Steel Glas, p. 61. 



NOTES 3SI 

1^ The Mansion of Magnanimity, Sig. E. 

" Cornwallis, Sig. K, 8 v., sq. 

i*An Apologia of the English Seminaries,/. 95. , ^ ,. ^ o- n 

le Vide The Free School of War. Translated from the Italian, 1625, Sig. H, 

IV, sq. 

"Works, VII, 232. 

18 Battle of Alcazar, II, II, 32. 

19 /^jif "The Admonition to the Nobility and People of England, 1588. 

20 Praise of Solitarinesse, 1577, p. 85, v. 

21 The Martyrdom of Mr. Campion and Mr. Sherwin. Anon. 1581, Sig. C, 11, 

V, J?. 

22 R. Crompton, The Mansion of Magnanimity, Sig. K, 3 v. 

23 Correspondence, p. 10. 

2« "A Letter concerning the rendering of Daventine, Antwerp, 1587. 

25 R. Crompton, Mansion of Magnanimity, 1599, Sig. G, I, v. 

26 Last Fight of the Revenge, Edit. Arber, p. 30. 

27 Ibid., p. 91. 

28 Leic. Corn, p. 150. 

29 Journal,/. 417. 

30 Chamberlain, Letters, p. 150. 
" Chamberlain, 9 Aug., 1599. 

Chapter IV 

1 Apologie, /. 34. 

2 Pollard, Henry VII, Sources, III p. 321. 

3 Cavendish, p. 277. 
* Utopia, p. 142. 
*Marillac, pp. 114, 208. 

6 Wm. Roy, Dialogue between a Father and his Son, p. 69. 
' Sermons, 1552,/. 132 b. 

8 John Bale, The Examination of Ann Askew, N. D. 

9 Vide Sermon preached at Stamford. 
1" Sermons, i$'/i,f. 96. 

" C. Agrippa, Variety of Sciences, /. 79, sq. 

12 De Maisse, Journal,/. 283. 

" Bayne, Anglo-Roman Relations Oxford, 1913, p. i, sq. 

1* Leicester's Commonwealth, p. 20. 

15 Hist., p. 6. 

1* A Conference, p. 205. 

" Eccles. Polit., Bk. VIII, Chaps, i, 2, 3. 

18 Op. cit., Bk. V, Ch. XXX. 

19 Op. cit., Bk. V, Ch. LXXXI. 

20 Apology, Pt. IV, p. 85 (Cassel's Edit.). 

21 Life and Times of Hatton, p. 59. 

22 Letter to Euphues, p. 194. 

23 See James Lancaster, Journey to Brazil, 1594. 

Chapter V 

1 Cavendish, p. 273. 

2 Brewer, II, 451. 

8 More, Dialogue Concerning Heresies. 

* Dialoge, p. 19. 

6 Ibid., p. 135. . ^., ^ . ^ , 

6 J Olde, A short description of Antichrist, N. D., circa ISSS>/- 3o, 43- 



352 NOTES 

^ Correspondence, p. 44. 

8 Letter to Cecil, Works II, 447, sq. 

^Quoted in Forneron, Philip II, Vol. II, 12. 

10 Op. ciU, pp. 88, sq. 

" For. Cal., 1561-1562, Nos. 734-735, quoted by Bayne, p. 140. 

12 Leicester's Commonwealth, p. 222. 

13 1'Estoile Diary, IV, p. 17. 

1* Apologie, /. 82 V. 

1^ Pres. St. of Ireland, p. 679. 

1^ Cited by M. Hume, Two English Queens, p. 436. 

" Advice to Queen Elizabeth, Harl. Misc. VII, 56, sq. 

18 Digges, p. 91. 

1^ Leic. Comm., pp. 14, sq. 

^ Reprinted in Pollard's Tudor Tracts, p. 184. 

21 Anat. of Abuses, I, 130. 

22 Ant. Gilby a pleasant Dialogue, Repr. by Arber, Martin Marprelate, p. 34. 

23 Chamberlain's Letters, 15 Oct., 1600, p. 91. 



Chapter VI 

1 The Ploughers Edit. Arber, p. 25. 

2 Cf. Discourse of the Commonweal, p. 133. 

3 History, p. 90. See also Leic. Comm., p. 20. 

^ Manningham's Diary, pp. no, 156. Cj. Shaks., Twelfth Night, II, III. 

s Hooker, Chap. Ill, etc. 

8 Vide A Conference, Pt. II, 242. 

^ Nug. Ant., II, 9. 

*Udall, Diotrephes Edit. Arber, p. 12. 

^ Cf. Primaudaye, French Acad. 216. 

1° Cf. G. Whetstone, Mirror for Magistrates of Cities, Sig. G. IV b. 

" Christian PoHcy, Ed. 1574, p. 142. 



Chapter VII 

1 Utopia, p. 197. 

2 Dialog. Concermng Heresies, Works, p. 131. 

3 Dialogue between John Bon and Master Parson, Tudor Tracts, p. 161. 

* Second Sermon to the King 1549, p. 54. See, also, p. 121. 

* Ascham, Scholemaster, p. 82. 
^ Harrison; I, 274. 

^ A Conference, p. 208, sq. 

* Hooker, Works II, 605, sq. 
s Dom. Cal., 1601, 3, p. 23. 
1° Digges, p. loi. 

" A Conference, Pt. II, 253. 

^"^ Leic. Comm., p. 20. 

13 Dom. Cal. Addend. 1566-1579, p. 439. 

" Admonitions (Ed. Arber), pp. 15, 27. 

1^ Vide Martin Marprel., Controv., p. 58. 

i« Pp. 87, sq. 

" Kyd., Edit. Boas Introd., p. LXXI, sq. 

18 Vide Lyly, Euphues and his Ephoebus, p. 140. 

" Camden, p. 475. 

2" Discourse, p. 129. 



NOTES 353 

Chapter VIII 

1 Vide Confessio Amantis, Prolog. 12 and 34. 

2 Dialogue between Experience and a Courtier 1. S3bo. 

3 Cf. Boaistuau, Rule of the World, Englished by John Alday, Sig. G, III, sq. 
* Utopia, p. 132. 

6 Ibid. 

6 C/. Brantome VI, 18. . , . t^ „ , t- j t- ^ „ -,-,r^ 

7 Vide Churchyard's account reprinted in Pollard, Tudor Tracts, p. 329. 

s Odet de Selve, pp. 394» -f?- , . -^ „ ., ^ ^ t^ . r.^ ., ,n 
9W Patten, account reprinted in Pollard s Tudor iracts, pp. 45» ^1- 

nThe"spanfeolfnie,Transl. by M. M. S., London, 1583. To the Reader. 

12 Fynes Moryson, Shak. Europe, pp. 473, sq. 

13 Ibid., p. 259. 

Chapter IX 

1 Utopia, pp. 37» 45- 
^Starkey, pp. II9> I94- 
3 Perlin, p. 28. 
~~^4 Pres. State of Ireland, p. 618. 
6 Brynklow, p. 27. 

6 Anat. of Abuses II, 12. 

7 Seven Sermons, Edit., 1572,/- I3 b. 

8 Fenton, Christian PoHcy, p. 189. . o c- n TT ,, r„ 

9 FjW^ The Martyrdom of M. Campion, M Sherwin, 1581, big. D, 11, v., sq 

10 Vide Machyn's Diary, pp. 59, sq., for detads of the execution of Sir 1 . Wyatt 
the Younger. 

11 Hist., p. 308. 

12 Edward I, I,. U. \i6, sq. 

13 Paston Letters, letter 861. 

14 Vide Boke of Curtesye, Early Eng. Text Soc, p. 30. 
IB Bishop Fisher, I, 297. 

16 Cavendish, p. 207. 
I'' Stow, p. 81. 

18 Black Letter Ballads and Broadsides, p. 228. 

19 First Sermon, 1549, p. 91- 

2" Sermon to the Ploughers, p. 23. 

21 Works, p. 9; Simon Fish, p. 79. 

22 Cf. The Governour, p. 145. , o- ^^ ^ "-r r 

23 (Ven. Cal. II, 1287). Cf. Wyatt's epitaph on Sir T. Gravener lo favour 
truth, to further right, the poor's defence," p. 235. 

2* Lever, Sermons, pp. 64, 69, 109. 
25 Brynklow, p. 52. • , n^r 

28 Ibid., Complaynt of Roderick Mors. 

27 Latimer, First Serm. before the King, p. 38^ 

28 Vide Nichols, Lit. Rem. Ed. VI, 1, CLAAA. 

29 Ibid., I, CLXXXI, sq. 

30 F. 106 v. 

31 Vide Fenton, Christian Policy, p. 173. 

32 Anat. of Abuses, I, 59- 

Chapter X 
1 S. Gosson, School of Abuse, p. 34. 



354 NOTES 

Chapter XI 

1 Paston Lett. No. 97. 
^ Ibid., p. 94. 

^ Roper, p. 2; z'Jif^' Ital. Rel., p. 24. 

* Ital, Rel., p. 27. 
^ Brynklow, p. 18. 
^ Starkey, p. 186. 

^ Roper, p. 2. 

8 Vide C. L. Powell, English Domestic Relations, N. Y. 1917. 

3 First Sermon, p. 35; see also Fourth Sermon, p. 128. 

1° Camden, p. 55. 

11 Ascham, Scholemaster, p. 50. 

12 Satire of the Three Estates, 11. 3931, sq. 

13 fide Life and Times of Hatton, p. 3 14. 

PART IV 

Chapter I 
^ Utopia, p. 122. 

2 Letter, 1 1 Feb., 1574. 
^ Letter, 24 July, 1574. 

^ Dedication to his translation of Guicciardini. 

^ W. C, Pref. to Polimanteia, 1595. 

fi Letter-Book, p. 86. 

^ Ibid., p. 282. 

^ Defence, Edit. G. Gregory Smith Eliz. Critical Essays, II, 384. 

^ Dialogue between Experience and a Courtier 1. 549. 

M Bk. Ill, Ch. 4. 

11 Discourse, Edit. G. Gregory Smith, Eliz. Critical Essays, I, 241. 

1^ Lois le Roy, Variety of Things, p. 108; Eng. trans., 1594. 

Chapter II 

1 Garland of Laurel. Cf. S. Hawes, Pastime of Pleasure, 

2 Edit., Small, IV, p. 223. 

^ Cf. Languet to Sidney, 19 Nov., 1573. 

^ Hakluyt Dent Edit, II, 256. 

^ I Tamb. I, II, 202. 

® Camden, p. 221. 

^ Letter, 15 Feb., 1578. 

Chapter III 

^ Henryson, The Reasoning betwixt Death and Man, p. 27. 

2 Roper, p. 39. 

3 F. Q. I, IX, 40. 

^ Chron. of Henry VIII, p. 70. 

« Ibid., p. 86. 

^Harl. Misc. Ill, 115. 

^ Brantome, Dames, p. 432. 

* Camden; 549; Chamberlain, 24 Feb., 1600. 

* G. Whetstone, Censure of a Loyal Subject, Sig. B, I, sq. 
1" Sermons, p. 200. 

" Lit. Rem. I, CLVII. 



NOTES 3SS 

Chapter IV 
^ Toxophilus, p. 157. 
^Utopia, p. 112. 

* Stubbes, Anat. of Ab., p. 178. 

Chapter V 
^ Cf. Hentzner, pp. 54, 83. 
2 Starkey, Dialogue, p. 176. 

* Wyatt, Poems, p. 193. Cf. La Noue, Discourses, Eng. trans., p. 135. 

Chapter VI 

^ For a treatment of this subject see T. A. Gotch, Early Ren. Arch, in Eng., 
Lond., 1901. 

^Archaeol. XII, 381, jg^. 
^ Colyn Clout, I, 945, sq. 
^ Governour, II, 23. 

6 Ibid., I, 43, sq. 

^ Sir G. Buck, App., p. 986 to Stow, Chronicle Edit., 161 5. 
^ Cf. R. Lincke, The Fountain of Ancient Fiction, Lond., 1599, Trans, from 
the Italian, on the artistic representation of the statues of ancient gods. 
® Poems, p. 214. 

* Reprinted in Tudor Tracts, p. 444. 
1° Itinerary, p. 421. 

11 Wint. Tale, V, 11. 

^2 Preface to his translation of Lomazzo, 1598. One of the first accounts of 
Italian painters in English, may be gleaned from the translation of Louis le 
Roy, "Vanity of Things" published in 1594. 

^' Palladis Tamia, pp. 287, sq. 

^* Seventh Sermon, p. 186. 

1^ Letter published by La Ferriere Le /(5»»« Siecle et les Valois, p. 300. 

^^The Art of Drawing. The first English book on drawing is probably "A 
very proper treatise. The art of limning," London, Rich. Totell, 1573, bound 
with Bossewell, " Works of Armory and intended mainly for heraldic art." 

^' Preface to translation of Lomazzo. 

Chapter VII 

1 Pollard, Henry VII, Sources III, 168. 

^ Dreme, 1. 660. 

^ Admiral de France,/. 73, p. 12. 

* Discourse of the Commonwealth, 1581, p. 94. 

* Hist., p. 48. 
6F.Q.,IV,XI,2i. 

7 Two Gent. ofVer., I, IIL 

^ Vide "Journey of Sir H. Gilbert" and "A Welcome Home to Frobisher." 
^ Hentzner, p. 46. 
10 Hakluyt, I, 267. 

11 Ibid.y V, 332. 

12 Camd. Misc., V, 27. 

1^ Bacon's Works, II, 424, sq. 

'* Discourse in Praise of Queen Eliz., I, 501, see also Observations on a Libel, 
I, 514. 
1* Hentzner, p. 46. 



3s6 NOTES 

i« Hakluyt, II, 221. 

" Reprinted in Beazley Voyages, II, 151, sq. 

18 Cf. Cesare Federigo's travels in India, London, 1588, Pietro MafFei, 
Japan. 

1' Fide Beste, Preface to Frobisher's Voyages, 1578, Sig. A. III. 

20 Segar, pp. 58, sq. 

21 Camden, p. 491. 
^^Greville, p. 112. 

23 FtW^ Hakluyt, VI, 116. 

2* Fide John Brereton, Relation of the Discovery of Virginia, London, 1602, 

P- 19- 

25 Bacon's Works, I, 700, 725. 

2«Epist. Ded., 2d Edit. 1599, I, pp. 39, sq. 

Chapter VIII 

^ L. Bryskett, Discourse of Civil Life. 

2 The Moral Philosophy of the Stoics, Trans, by Thomas James, London, 

1598- 

3 Sir T. Elyot "Of the Knowledge which Maketh a Wise Man." 1533. 

^The Counsellor, p. 13. 

^ Pref. to first edit. 

8 Anat. of Abuses, II, 53, sq. 

' Present State of Ireland, p. 628. 

* Ibid., p. 633. 

^ Cavendish, p. 227. 

1° See Chapter on Superstition in Shakespeare's England to which acknowledg- 
ment is made. 

" Martin Marprelate, p. 58, edit. Arber. 
12 Harrington, Nug. Ant., I, 268. 

Chapter IX 

^ Thomas, Pilgrim, p. 6. Nicander Nicaeus, Cam. Soc, II, p. 9, Ital. Rel., 
pp. 20, 23. 

2 Chron. Edit. Whitbley, I, 154. 
^ Nicander Nicaeus, II, p. 9. 

* J. Proctor in Tudor Tracts, pp. 209, sq., 237, 254. 
^ Dialogue, pp. 122, sq. 

^ Camden, p. 233. 

'' A conference, Pt. II, 224. 

* Fynes Moryson, p. 474. 

' d'Ewes,. Journals, pp. 508, sq. 

1° Busch, p. 239. 

1^ Pres. St. of Ireland, p. 629. 

12 Fynes Moryson, p. 196. 

13 Solon, his Follie. 

1* Letter to Sir T. Hoby, 16 July, 1557, printed at the end of the Courtier, 
1561, Edit. 

1* Fide Toxophilus. 

18 Hall was criticised for the "indenture EngUsh" and "inkhorn terms" 
of his Chronicle. Scholemaster, p. iii. 

1^ Leland, Laborious Journey, Sig. C, IV. 

18 Letter Book, pp. 65, sq. 



NOTES 357 

i« Sig. I, 8, V. 

2»V. I, p. III. 

^^ Epistle on the Valueing of the EngHsh Tongue. Greg. Smith, Op. Cit., II, 
28s, sq. 

2^ Polimanteia, Sig. R, 2 V. 

^' General Censure, 1589. See also Introd. to Greene's Menaphon. 

^* Corn. Agrippa, Vanity of Science, Eng. transl., pp. 14, sq. 

^5 Letter to Sidney, 28 Jan., 1574. 

^ Grammatica Anglicana, followed by a Chaucerian Dictionary, Camb., 
IS94 by P. G. 

Chapter X 

^ St. Pap. Ill, 240, cited by Brewer I, 315. 

2 Somerset's Epistle, 1548. Early Eng. Text Soc. 1872. Pollard's Prot. 
Somerset, pp. 148, sq. 

^ Camden, p. 197. 

* Works, Edit. Grosart, I, 287. 

^ Beazley, II, 215. 

flHakluyt, III, 150. 

^Nicholas Denisot was tutor to the daughters of the Protector General, and 
Jerome Colas teacher to the children of Jane Countess of Southampton. 

® Among the little known ones may be mentioned the Vocabularium Anglicis et 
Gallicis Verbis Scriptum, 1530. Coll. Baroness James de Rothschild, Paris, and 
also Gabriel Meurier, Traite pour apprendre a parler franf ais et anglois, Rouen, 
1563, intended especially for commercial use "puisque on parle fran9ais a la 
cour d' Angleterre. 

' Heir follows testament and complaynt of our Soverane lorde's . . . Im- 
prented at the command and expenses of Maister Sammuel Jascvy in Paris, 
1558. His Dreme was also printed in Paris at the same date, and both appeared 
at Rouen in the same year. See Lyndsay's Works, Ed. Laing, III, 269. 

1" Verses in English and Scottish were printed by Charles Utenhove in com- 
memoration of the death of Henry II. 

11 Introd. to Greene's Menaphon. 

*^ Holinshed, p. 97. 

" Fide Gabriel Harvey Letterbook, p. 98. 

" Euphues and his Ephoebus, p. 152. See the writer's "Italian Renaissance 
in England," Chapter on The Italian Danger, etc. 



Chapter XI 

1 Bale, Edit. Leland, 1549, Sig. G. III. 

2 Ascham, Scholemaster, p. 136. 
^ Harrison, I, 78. 

^ Sermon at Paul's Cross, p. 120. 
^ Sermons Ed. Arber, p. 41. 
^ Harrison, I, 77, sq. 
'' Stubbes, Anatomy, II, 20. 
* Leic. Comm., p. 99. 
^ Letterbook, p. 91. 

1" La Cena dei Ceneri, Edit., Lagarde, p. 176. 

""Academiae Cantabrigiensis Lachrymae." Equites D. PhiHppi Sidnsei, 
Oxford, 1587. 

12 Harvey, Letterbook, p. 78. 



3S8 NOTES 

Chapter XII 

^ Paston Letters, Edit. Gairdner, Intro., I, 117. 
2 Sir Wm. Forrest, II, 238, sq. 
^ Christian Policy, pp. 191, sg., edit. 1574. 
*Anat. of Abuses, II, 21. 

* Chamberlain, Letters, 4 Nov., 1602. 

* Ellis, Orig. Lett., p. 67. 

'A. Flemming, Panoply of Epistles, 1576. Wm. Fulwood, The Enemy of 
Idleness, 1593. Wits Theatre of the Little World, compiled by Robert Abbott, 
London, 1599. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, WilHam, 313 

Agrippa, Cornelius, 161 

Alba, Duchess of, 127 

Aldines, 318 

Allen, Cardinal, 7, 92, 190-7, 216, 280 

Alva, Duke of, 215 

Anjou, Duke of, 218, 302 

Aretine, 315, 333 

Ariosto, 261, 306 

Aristotle, 79, 160, 174, 322 

Arundel, Lord, 206 

Ascham, Roger, 48, 159, 163, 249, 265, 

305, 312, 320 sq., 338 
Askew, Anne, 204 
Atchelow, Thomas, 306 
Audeley Sir T. 59 
Ayala, 76 
Aylmer, 209 

Babington, 235, 264 

Bacon, 4, 40 sq., 47 sq., 54 sq., 69, 90, 
95, 115, 132, 152, 199, 213, 223, 250, 
261 sq., 277, 282, 292, 298, 312, 322 
sq., 33Ij338 

Bainham, James, 211 

Baldwin, H., 160 

Bale, John, 17, 161, 306 

Ballard, 264 

Bancroft, Richard, 222 

Barckley, Sir Richard, 229, 280 

Barlow, Jerome, 89 

Barnfield, Richard, 260, 296 

Barton, Elizabeth, 282 

Bate, John, 227 

Bayne Roger, 192, 280 

Beale, Dr., 300 

Beaton, Cardinal, 70 

Becon, Richard, 303 

Belloy, 17 

Bembo, Cardinal, 305, 339 

Bergues, de, 213 

Berners, Dame Juliana, 125, 160 

Berri, Due de, 265 

Berquin, 127 

Berthelet, 88 

Beste, 195 

Bettes, John, 275 



Bilney, 204, 235 

Biron, Marshal, 128 

Blundevile, 159 

Bodenham, Captain, 286 

Bodin, 256 

Bodley, Sir Thomas, 309 

Boles, P., 71 

Boleyn, Anne, 6 sq., 22 sq., 67, 85 sq., 

115 sq., 126, 152, 247, 263, 313 
Bossewell, 160 
Bourbon, Nicholas, 314 
Bourke, Ulich, 303 
Bowes, Sir, Jerome, 259 
Brandon, Gregory, 153 
Brantome, 191 
Breughel, 231 
Brian, Alexander, 235 
Brissac, Marshal de, 213 
Bruno, Giordano, 280, 322 
Brynklow, Richard, 17, 133, 182-4, 

234-7. 325 
Bryskett, L., 160, 279 
Buchanan, T., 17, 70, 82, 213, 253 
Buckhurst, Lord, 338 
Buckingham, Duke of, 5, 42, 53, 57, 

61, 66, 85, 117, 150, 163 
Buckle, 81 
Bude, 312 

Burgundy, Duke of, 11 
Burleigh, Lord (see alsoW. Cecil), 55, 

72, 92, 96, 115, 138, 19s, 212, 217, 

267, 276 

Cabot, J., 287 

Caius, 307 

Calvin, 198 

Camden, William, 60, 207, 235, 289, 

307»3i2 
Campion, Father, 193, 235 
Campion, Jasper, 289 
Carew, 306 

Carhill, Christopher, 297 
Carleton, 227 
Castello, A. di, 47 
Castelnau, 16 
Castiglione, 158, 273 
Cavendish, Sir Charles, 120 



361 



362 



INDEX 



Cavendish, Thomas, 28, 116, 295 

Caxton, 144, 187, 225, 316 

Cecil, Sir Robert, 302 

Cecil William (see also Lord Burleigh), 

24>3S. 59.116,152 
Chaloner, Sir Thomas, 213, 271 
Chamberlain, T., 156 
Chantonnay, 170 
Charles the Bold, 42 
Charles I, 19 
Charles V, 257 
Charles IX, 72 sq. 
Chaucer, 157, 258, 304 
Cheke, Ann, 126 
Cheke, Sir John, 88, 205, 338 
Cheke, Sir Thomas, 306 
Chieregati, 39 
Cholmeley, Richard, 227 
Churchyard, Thomas, 174, 336 
Clanrickard, Earl of, 303 
Cleves, Ann of, 126 
Cobham, Elizabeth, 249 
Cognet, 69, 213 
Coke, T., 306 
Colet, 201, 246, 312 
Coligny, 72 
Colonna Vittoria, 129 
Columbus, 286 sq. 
Comines, P. de, 11, 47, 150 
Cooper, Thomas, 17 
Cope, William, 281 
Copley, Sir Thomas, 155, 193, 212 
Cornwallis, Sir W., 75, 190, 280, 339 
Cotton, G., 48 
Cotton, Sir Robert, 309 
Cox, Samuel, 59 
Cranmer, Archbishop, 183 
Cranmer, G., 226 
Croke, 48 

Crompton, R., 17, igo 
Cromwell, Thomas, 5, 39 sq., 42, 49, 

52 sq., 58, 88 sq., 117, 120, 243 
Crowley, 97, 159, 182-4, 237. 3 25 

Dacres, Lord, 65, 117 

Daniel, Samuel, 257, 306, 312, 340 

Dante, 157, 225 

Darcy, Lord, 117, 187 

Darell, Wild, 122 

d'Aubigne, 48 

Davison, 35,74 

deJuUo, 122 

Dekker, 90 

de la Popeliniere, 286 

"de Maisse, 36, 195, 206 



Derby, Lord, 226, 235 

de Selve, 232 

De Soto, 229 

Devonshire, Marquess of, 117 

Dorset, Marquess of, 163, 170 

Doughty, 260 

Douglas, 145 

Douglas, Gawain, 147, 157, 257-9, 265, 

r^ 304 . 

Drake, Sir Francis, 62, 107, 238, 257, 

260, 291 sq., 297, 334 
Drayton, 186, 297 
Du Bartas, 48 
Du Bellay, 305 sq. 
Dudley, 40, 53, 77, 158 
Du Ferrier, 72 
Dunbar, 85 
Duns Scotus, 320-2 
Du Vair, 280 
Dyer, Sir Edward, 281, 337 

Edward I, 235 

Edward II, 15, 29 

Edward IV, 4, 11, 56, 66 

Edward VI, 7, 25, 31, 48, 78 sq., 95, 
105, 137, 163, 200, 205, 237 sq., 264, 
301 

Egmont, 59 

Eliot, John, 314 

Elizabeth, Queen, 7, 10, 15 sq., 19, 25, 
28-32 sq., 42, 48, 52, 57, 60, 67 sq., 
83, 88 sq., 93 sq., 113, 116 sq., 125-8, 
132-7 sq., 150 sq., 164-9, 173 sq., 
184 sq., 192 sq., 198 sq., 204 sq., 
212-5 sq., 221 sq., 233, 243, 250-9, 
289 sq., 296, 301 sq., 340 

Elizabeth of York, 4 

Ely, Bishop of, 25 

Elyot, Sir Thomas, 51, 79, 158 sq., 
165, 190, 237, 272, 326, 336 

Empson, 40 

Erasmus, 47, 78, 127, 181, 201, 231, 
246, 259, 318 sq. 

Essex, Lord, 40-2, 55, 71, 92 sq., 96, 
120 sq., 195, 219-222, 263, 292, 337 

Essex, Lady, 122 

Estienne, Henri, 314, 318 

Exeter, Duke of, 11 

Exeter, Lord, 66 

Falstaf, Sir John, 245 

Fenton, Geoffrey, 160, 224, 256, 326 

Ferdinand of Aragon, 5, 76 

Feme, 160 

Ferrara, Cardinal of, 214 



INDEX 



363 



Fish, Simon, 88, 133-5, 237. 325 
Fisher, Cardinal, 87, 96, 117, 159, 178, 

187, 203, 237 
Fitz Patrick, 303 
Fletcher, Giles, 295 
Forest, Father, 204 
Forrest, Sir William, 134, 326 
France, Queen of, 247 
Francis I, 31, 58, 220, 272 
Franco, Veronica, 243 
Frederick II, 217 
Frobisher, 195, 257 

Gaguin, 307 

Gardner, 25 

Garthe, Richard, 281 

Gascoigne, G., 147, 155, 161, 233, 275, 

305,314,337 
Gascoigne, Sir W., 245 
Gaveston, P., 15 
Gawdy, Philip, 291 
Gilbert, 279 
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 166, 257, 262, 

291 
Giustiniani, 272 
Golding, Arthur, 222, 329 
Googe, B., 161 
Goslicius, Grimaldus, 81, 281 
Gosson, Stephen, 147 
Gower, 230 

Granville, Cardinal, 213 
Greene, R., 18, 91, 315, 322, 334 
Grenville, Sir Richard, 122, 148, 194, 

260 
Gresham, 60 
Greville, Fulke, 280, 337 
Grey, Lady Jane, 1 16, 248, 263 
Grey, Lord Leonard, 117 
Grey, Lord, 170 
Grocyn, William, 317 
Guicciardini, 69 
Guise, Duke of, 55, 'j'j, 119, 232 

Haddon, Walter, 326 
Hakluyt, 281-6, 292 sq. 
Hales, John, 184, 190 
Hall, 28, 300 

Harrington, Sir J., 60, 223 
Harriott, 228 

Harrison, T., 128, 134-6, 306 
Harvey, 279 

Harvey, Gabriel, 281, 305, 322 sq. 
Haselton, Richard, 293 
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 32, 40-2 45, 
59, 143, 184, 209, 336 



Hawes, Stephen, 146 

Hawkins, 238, 291-3 sq., 334 

Hawkwood, Sir J., 173 

Haydocke, Richard, 275 sq. 

Heneage, Sir T., 35 

Henry IV, 211 

Henry IV, of France, 35, 198, 217 

Henry VI, 48, 62, 187, 199 

Henry VII, 4 sq., 9 sq., 13, 20 sq., 26- 
8, 38, 47, 51 sq., 64 sq., 76, 84-8, 95 
sq., 103, 133, 146, 150-5, 168, 235, 
246 sq., 286 sq., 296 

Henry VIII-X, 5 sq., 10-18, 21-8 sq., 
33. 39. 47 sq-. SI sq., 65 sq., 71-8, 
86 sq., 108, 163-9, 173, 184-9, 200- 
S, 220, 233, 247 sq., 259, 272-8, 299, 
303-5, 310, 314, 325 

Henry, Prince, 5 

Henryson, 147, 157 

Henslowe, 334 

Hentzner, 136 

Herbert, Sir William, 233 

Hersey, Lord, 117 

Hertford, Lord, 138, 232 

HilHard, Nicholas, 275 

Holbein, 271-4 

Holinshed, 93, 128, 238 

Homer, 261 

Hooker, Richard, 207 sq., 226 

Hooper, Bishop, 249 

Hovel, Nicholas, 276 

Howard, Katherine, 40, 87, 115, 263 

Howard, Lord, 194 

Huguenots, 92 

Humphrey, Duke, 28, 317 

Humphrey, Lawrence, 159, 184, 315 

Huntington, Lord, 236 

Huntley, Lord, 144 

Hussey, Lord, 187 

Isabella d'Este, 39 
Ivan the Terrible, 259 

Jackman, Charles, 293 

James IV, 18, 48, 144 

James VI, 35, 74, 223, 284, 304, 3 14 

Jesuits, 92, 313 

Jewell, Bishop, 209 

Jonson, Ben, 335 

Juana, Mad, 246 

Julius II, Pope, 191 

Katherine of Aragon, 5, 14, 26, dj, 86 

sq., 199, 246 
Kempe, W., 165 



364 



INDEX 



Kennedy, 85, 147 

Kenys, Lawrence, 296 

Kett, Francis, 228 

Keys, 248 

Kildare, Earl of, 117 

Kitson, Sir Thomas, 143 

Knox, John, 70, 90, 124 sq., 130, 244 

Knyvett, Sir H., 171 

Kyd, T., 228 

Lambarde, William, 93 

Lambert, John, 200 

La Mothe Fenelon, 314 

Languet, Hubert, 44, 174, 232 sq., 255 

sq., 307 
LaNoue, 191, 214, 232 
La Primaudaye, 69, 314 
Las Casas, 233 
Latimer, Hugh, 17, 49, 53, 62, 124, 

133 sq., 183, 204, 221-6, 235-7, 

247, 264,275,321 
Lauder, William, 82 
Leicester, Lord, 8, 16, 35, 40, 55-7, 60, 

69, 120, 133, 150, 156, 163, 169, 171, 

195, 206, 227, 322 
Leigh, 160 
Leland, J., 318 
Le Roy, Loys, 314 
Lever, T., 182-4, 237, 321 
Lilly, W., 320 
Linacre, Thomas, 317, 321 
Lluyd, Humphrey, 307 
Locke, Mrs. 129 
Lodge, Thomas, 90, 282 
Lopez, Dr., 71 
Louis XI, 52, 62 
Lupset, 184 

Luther, 198, 203, 211, 226, 298 
Lydgate, 136, 146, 306 
Lyly, 46, 119, 129, 162, 210, 250, 315 
Lyndsay, Sir David, 70, 85, 124, 146 

sq., 230, 249, 257, 281-6, 306, 314 

Mac GilHphraddin, 303 
Machiavelli, 9, 49, 188 
Machyn, Henry, 85 
Mac Sweeny, 303 
Maitland of Lethington, 193 
Major, William, 17, 82 
Malatesta, 261 
Malory, Sir T., 144, 225 
Manningham, 251 
Mantuanus, 328 
Margaiet of Burgundy, 4, 125 
Marillac, 31, 59 



Markham, Gervase, 148, 160, 195 

Marlowe, Christopher, 8, 15, 18, 29, 
98, 119, 186, 228, 262, 322, 330-7 

Marot, Clement, 126 

Martin Marprelate, 91, 222, 334 

Mary, Queen, 6 sq., 27, 31, 57-9, e^, 
89 sq., 125 sq., 137, 170, 204, 215, 
289, 301, 320 

Mary Stuart, 6, 16, 59, 73 sq., 90, 129, 
216 sq., 260-3 

Mason, Sir John, 120 

Matthew, Sir Toby, 280 

Mayne, Cuthbert, 215 

Medici, Catherine de', 44, 72 

Melancthon, 88 

Mendoza, 216 

Meres, Francis, 275, 306 

Michelangelo, 274 sq., 298 

Michele, 24 

Monchrestien, 314 

Montague, Lord, 117, 206 

Montaigne, 339 

Montesquieu, 159 

Montmorency, Floras de, 213 

Moray, Regent, 227 

More, Sir Thomas, 13, 17, 27, 45-9, 
57 sq., 68, TJ sq., 85 sq., 94 sq., 
120, 134, 145, 158, 177 sq., 182, 199 
sq., 203, 211, 225, 231-7, 245 sq., 
250, 255-9, 262-6, 279, 312, 321 

Morton, Cardinal, 245 

Moryson, Fynes, 129, 275, 302 

Mountjoy, Lord, 45, 144, 173, 246, 250 

Murray, Earl of, 6 

Napier, 279 

Napoleon, 4, 33 

Nash, Thomas, 91, 306, 315, 322, 334 

Naunton, Sir R., 118, 164 

Navagero, 51 

Navarre, Margaret of, 129 

Norden, 307 

Norfolk, Duke of, 40, 61, 117, 120, 150, 

206, 262 
Norris, Sir John, 170 
Northampton, Marquess of, 249 
Northumberland, Duke of, 7, 264 
Northumberland, Earl of, 15, 333 

O'Brien, Morrough, 303 
Occleve, 136 
Ocland, Christopher, 328 
Olde, John, 312 
O'Neill's, the, 71 
O'Neill, Shan, 289 



INDEX 



365 



Orange, William of, 68, 74, 185, 225 

Orosius, 307 

O'Rourke, 303 

Osorius, 158 

Ovid, 222, 329 

Oxford, Lord, 121, 155, 337 

Pace, Richard, 53, 312 

Paget, 24,43,57, 120 

Palgrave, 305 

Palingenius, 328 

Parker, Archbishop, 309 

Parma, Duke of, 70, 170, 233 

Parr, Katherine, 247 

Parsons, Robert, 8, 117, 313 

Paston, 313 

Paul IV, Pope, 191 

Paulet, 120, 177 

Peacham, Henry, 160, 276 

Peckham, Sir George, 297 

Peele, 19, 69, 191, 224, 234 

Pembroke, Countess of, 129 

Pembroke, Lord, 290, 

Penry, John, 91, 227, 282 

Percy, 145 

Perlin, 117, 234 - 

Pet, Arthur, 292 

Petrarch, 258, 292, 333 

Pheidias, 275 

Philip II, 7, 32, 59, 70, 89, 170, 192, 

205, 213, 233, 289, 302 
Philips, T., 70 
Phillips, Miles, 293 
Pibrac, 255 
Piccolomini, 165 
Pico della Mirandola, 158, 259 
Pilgrimage of Grace, 95 
Pius, V, Pope, 92 sq. 
Plato, 188 
Plutarch, 162 
Pole, Cardinal, 81, 177, 189, 205, 246, 

301 
Pole, Edmund de la, 5 
Poulet, Sir A.,45 
Poynet, Bishop, 70, 81, 159 
Praxitiles, 275 
Puebla, 51 

Puttenham, G., 19, 43, 257, 274, 340 
Pynson, Richard, 318 

Rabelais, 156 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 118, 173, 194, 

228,257, 263, 296 sq., 337 
Ramus, Peter, 312 
Rastell, John, 318 



Richard II, 21 1 

Richard III, 4, 62 

Rich, Lord, 58, 250 

Rich, Lady, 250 

Richmond, Countess of, 125, 236 

Richmond, Duke of, 6, 48 

Ridley, Bishop, 237 

Robinson, Ralph, 189 

Robsarte, Amy, 122 

Romano, Giulio, 275 

Ronsard, 48, 306, 315 

Roper, 59 

Roulart, 72 

Roy, William, 52, 88 

Royden, Matthew, 228, 306 

Sackville, T., 43 

SaHsbury, Countess of, 117 

Sandys, Bishop, 218 

Savonarola, 204 

Scaliger, 320-2, 334 

Scott, Reginald, 284 

Scrope, Stephen, 245 

Segar, W., 160, 173 

Selden, 309 

Shakespeare, 9, 18, 92, iii, 129, 210, 

256, 266, 275-9, 282 sq., 290, 298, 

306, 330-5 
Sheffidd, Lord, 65 
Shelley, 265 

Sherwin, Father, 193, 235 
Shrewsbury, Lord, 269 
Sidney, Sir Henry, 54, 59 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 43-5, 54 sq., 62, 97, 

120, 145-8, 154-6, 166, 174, 232, 

250> 255-9, 291, 297, 326-8, 333 sq., 
.337 sq. 
Simier, 121 
Skelton, 146, 259, 272 
Smeaton, Mark, 42, 67 
Smith, John, 173, 297 
Smith, Sir Thomas, 264, 308, 321, 

338 
Somerset, Protector, 126, 169, 212, 

249 sq., 264, 310 
Southampton, Lord, 251, 264 
Speaight, 307 
Speed, 309 
Spelman, 307 
Spenser, Edmund, 19, 41-5 sq., 119, 

148 sq., 154, 162, 170, 217, 234, 256- 

8, 260 sq., 278, 283 sq., 290, 303-S» 

322, 333-5, 340 
Spinelli, 51 
Stanhope, J., 121 



366 



INDEX 



Stanley, Sir William, 96, 171, 193 

Staper, Richard, 293 

Starkey, Thomas, 81, 136, 145, 177 sq., 

189, 234, 301 
St. Bartholomew, 68, 72 sq., 113, 218, 

256 
Stile, J., 51 
Stokes, Adrian, 248 
Story, J., 71, 193 
Stow, J., 58, 23s, 307 sq. 
Streetes, W., 271 
Strozzi, 225 

Stuart, Lady Arabella, 116 
Stubbes, John, 32, 92, 193 
Stubbes, P., 17, 130, 138, 219, 234, 

239, 281, 326 
Stukeley, Sir T., 119, 191 
Suffolk, Duke of, 15, 38, 41, 57, 61, 

117, 163, 246 
Suffolk, Duchess of, 248 
Surrey, Lord, 38, 43, 53, 117, 137, 170, 

220, 246, 266, 326 
Sussex, Lord, 206, 251 
Swart, Martin, 168 
Switser, Christopher, 275 

Tasso, 306, 339 
Theocritus, 269, 333 
Thomas, William, 78, 322, 331 
Thomond, Earl of, 303 
Throckmorton, Cuthbert, 222 
Thynne, Francis, 307 
Thynne, William, 304, 307 
Tiptoft, 317 
Tonson, Robert, 289 
Torrigiano, 271 
Toto Antonio, 271 
Trivulzio, Marshal, 173 
Tunstall, Cuthbert, 3 12, 320 sq. 
Tyrone, 195 

Ubaldini, P., 256 



Udal, Nicholas, 6 
Underbill, Edward, 219 

Van, Linschoten, 292 
Vaux, Sir N., 42 
Vega, Garcilaso, de la, 51 
Vere, 303 
Verazzano, 287 
Vernon, Miss, 251 
Vinci, Leonardo da, 284 
Virgil, 256, 269, 333 
Virgil, Polydore, 183, 306 
Vives, 305 

Wallop, 87 

Walsh, Master, 15 

Walsingham, Sir F., 34 sq., 72 sq., 180, 

218, 290 
Warbeck, Perkin, 5, 52, 65, 115 
Warwick, 5 

Warwick, Lord, 40, 195 
Webbe, William, 258 
Wentworth, Peter, 88 
White, Gilbert, 265 
Williams, Roger, 173 
Wilson, Sir Thomas, 321, 338 
Wolfe, Reginald, 318 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 15, 38, 40-2, 49, 52, 

57 sq., 117, 120, 166, 182, 187, 199, 

211, 237, 269, 272, 300, 318, 32s sq. 
Worde, Wynkyn de, 3 14, 3 18 
Wordsworth, 265 
Wotton, Sir Henry, 248, 339 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 43 sq., 51, 62, 6"], 

265-9,274,335 
Wyatt, Sir T. (the younger), 89, 95, 

188, 220, 246, 264, 300 

York, Duke of, 64, 187 
Yorke, Rowland, 171 

Zwingli, 198 



r, 



X 



.0 '-^ 



